Ford makes $1bn investment in Argo AI to research and develop self-driving car tech

One of the world’s largest car manufacturers, US-based company Ford, plans to invest $1 billion to research and build artificial intelligence for its vehicles.

Ford states that it will invest $1 billion in the Argo AI startup within the next five years, which will focus on building and developing self-driving car technology.

At the beginning, Argo AI will build AI technology for Ford, exclusively, but after a few years it will do so for other manufacturers as well. This move is Ford’s biggest effort so far to enter the race for the car of the future, that Silicon Valley companies are currently running in.

Ford will be the majority owner, but will try to draw in the best robotics experts and engineers from other companies as well, as it tries to compete with Google, GM and other companies building self-driving cars.

"The next decade will be defined by the automation of the automobile, and autonomous vehicles will have as significant an impact on society as Ford’s moving assembly line did 100 years ago," says Ford President and CEO Mark Fields. "As Ford expands to be an auto and a mobility company, we believe that investing in Argo AI will create significant value for our shareholders by strengthening Ford’s leadership in bringing self-driving vehicles to market in the near term and by creating technology that could be licensed to others in the future."

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