Mobileye acquires humanoid robot startup Mentee Robotics for $900M

Mobileye made its name, and money, by supplying automakers with millions of computer chips designed to improve vehicle safety and advanced driver assistance systems. Intel’s smaller and later publicly traded company expanded to address autonomous driving through its chips and software.

Now, co-founder and president Amnon Shashua is taking the company into what he calls Mobileye 3.0. And this means that robotics is a great discovery.

The Israeli company announced Tuesday at CES in Las Vegas that it has reached a price to buy Mentee Robotics – a startup. produced by Shashua in 2022 – $900 million. Under the terms of the agreement, Mobileye will purchase Mentee Robotics for $612 million in cash and 26.2 million shares of common stock. Shashua, who is the chairman, co-founder and majority shareholder of Mentee, has withdrawn from consideration and approval from Mobileye’s board, according to the company.

The project, which was approved by the Mobileye board and Intel, which has the largest share, is expected to close in the first quarter. The sale is expected to increase Mobileye’s operating income in 2026 by a low single digit figure.

“Today is a new chapter in robotics and AI cars, and the beginning of Mobileye 3.0,” Shashua said on Tuesday. “By combining Mentee’s success in humanoid robotics with Mobileye’s autonomous expertise, as well as its ability to develop advanced AI, we are uniquely positioned to lead the evolution of physical AI in robotics and autonomous vehicles around the world.”

Mentee Robotics, which is developing humanoid robots, will continue as an independent division within Mobileye. Of course, with Shashua as the brains and shareholder between the two companies, there has been a lot going on.

The advantages of Mobileye are not obvious, except that everyone seems to be jumping into the humanoid robot game these days. Fortunately, Mobileye said the acquisition “expands the growth of the business and the large area of ​​Physical Artificial Intelligence in general.” In particular, systems designed to understand what is happening and what it is about and how to deal with nature and people and the world.

In other words, Mobileye, and Shashua, seem to want to move beyond the technology used to allow cars to navigate the world and use humanoid robots. The company indicated in its announcement that it has the money to get there, noting that its pipeline of vehicle acquisitions — led by autonomous vehicles and driver assistance technologies — is $24.5 billion over the next eight years. The company said the number of pipelines has increased by more than 40% compared to January 2023.

Of course, building humanoid robots that can eventually produce them will be an expensive business. Mentee stands to gain more because they can use Mobileye’s tools, which include advanced AI training – aka compute.

News of the purchase comes a day after Mobileye announced a customer win for its next-generation device designed for driver assistance systems. The company announced on Monday that a “top 10 automaker” has signed an agreement to purchase 9 million of its EyeQ6H-based Surround ADAS systems. The Volkswagen Group announced in March that it will also use the chip. Mobileye now estimates future deliveries of over 19 million EyeQ6H-based Surround systems.