Apple took over the failed self-driving car company: owned by Andrew Ng, once valued at $200 million, CEO and most employees were laid off

Li Genqianming from Aofei Temple
Quantum Bit Report | Public Account QbitAI

Drive.ai, the end result of this startup is like this:

The latest news is that this star driverless car company, which once shone in Silicon Valley and attracted global attention and was personally operated by Andrew Ng, has submitted documents to liquidate the project.

Documents submitted by Drive.ai to the California employment department revealed that it will shut down at the end of the month and lay off more than half of its employees.

Next, Drive.ai will continue to "evolve" in another form.

Apple has acknowledged to the media that it has acquired Drive.ai, but only some engineers can wear Apple badges.

No one expected that Drive.ai's good move would end up like this.

Falling down

The news was first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle and was followed by a slew of media reports.

The report pointed out that Drive.ai has submitted documents to the California Employment Department, disclosing that the company will be shut down on Friday, permanently cease operations, and lay off most employees, including the current CEO, totaling more than 90 employees.

Currently, Drive.ai’s blog homepage on Medium is 404.

Although Drive.ai has fallen, it is still "alive" in another way.

Apple has confirmed to foreign media Axios that it has acquired Drive.ai, poached dozens of engineers, and purchased Drive.ai's driverless cars and other assets.

The specific acquisition amount was not disclosed. According to a previous report by Axios, Apple is expected to pay less than $77 million in venture capital funding - which is considered to be a break-even for investors.

As for the rumored acquisition valuation of $200 million, it is basically impossible.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, five Drive.ai employees have modified their LinkedIn profiles to show that they left Drive.ai in June and joined Apple.

For example, Caitlin Surakitbanharn , who was previously a human-computer interaction designer at Drive.ai, has now joined Apple's "special projects" as a system engineer.

Quantum位 also contacted Drive.ai officials, and its spokesperson declined to comment on the above news.

Andrew Ng also did not explain, saying that LandingAI is currently his main focus project.

Drive.ai, once a shining star

Drive.ai was founded in 2015 by a team of machine learning researchers from Stanford University, including CEO Sameep Tandon and co-founder Wang Tao, who were both Andrew Ng’s doctoral students. Carol Reiley, the founding president, is Andrew Ng’s wife.

When Drive.ai was first founded, it clearly announced that it would use deep learning technology to train driverless car systems and achieve L4 autonomous driving with a "toolkit" solution.

This approach has also caused Drive.ai to be criticized as "too radical" because deep learning is known as a "black box" and it is believed that using deep learning alone to train driverless cars is not safe and reliable.

But this did not affect the rapid development of Drive.ai.

In more than two years, it has raised a total of more than US$77 million in funds, with investors including Northern Light Venture Capital, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), GGV Capital, Grab, etc., and its valuation has reached US$200 million.

In February 2017, Drive.ai demonstrated its technological strength for the first time: it released a video of an unmanned vehicle driving through Mountain View in the rain at night, which caused a sensation on both sides of the Pacific. It was also the first unmanned driving startup in the world to demonstrate driving in the rain at night, and it became the talk of the town.

At the end of June 2017, while completing the B round of financing, Andrew Ng announced that he would join the board of directors of Drive.ai and participate in the actual operations.

After that, Drive.ai began to explore commercialization.

In September 2017, Drive.ai announced that it would provide driverless taxis for Lyft, but not much follow-up news came.

At the same time, Drive.ai also said it planned to open an office in Singapore and provide services, but nothing happened afterwards.

Finally, Drive.ai’s driverless car was launched in Texas in May 2018.

At that time, Drive.ai launched the trial operation of RoboTaxi, a driverless taxi, in Frisco, Texas, USA, and Andrew Ng and his wife personally appeared on the platform.

In October of the same year, Drive.ai officially opened its driverless pick-up service to the public in Arlington, Texas, with an operating mileage of 8,000 miles.

At that time, Drive.ai was optimistic about the future. They not only believed that they would be the fastest unmanned vehicle startup to realize RoboTaxi, but also that their business model had been verified, and the next step would be to roll out large-scale mass production and truly bring unmanned driving to thousands of households.

However, no one expected that the situation would take a sharp turn for the worse.

In March this year, foreign media The Information revealed that Drive.ai was seeking to sell itself for US$200 million.

Shortly thereafter, senior executives including co-founder Wang Tao resigned.

Drive.ai once denied the rumors of seeking acquisition, saying that the company was just carrying out normal financial operations and was not limited to a specific form, and also denied the valuation of US$200 million.

Soon after, Drive.ai was linked to Apple, but the rumors also made it clear: Apple only wanted talent, not the entire company.

Until now, the outcome is this: the company laid off employees and went bankrupt, and its business was shut down. In its exploration of driverless cars, Drive.ai first realized the company's "driverless car".

As for the specific reasons why Drive.ai opened high and closed low, there is no clear answer yet.

But some Silicon Valley VCs believe that it may be related to the overall situation on both sides of the Pacific.

Among Drive.ai’s many previous investors, a considerable proportion were investment funds with Chinese backgrounds, and Chinese buyers were the most enthusiastic in pursuing Drive.ai.

However, Trump's gradually tightening investment policies may further affect Drive.ai's financing path during the "capital winter".

Another way of saying

In addition, there is another cause of death of Drive.ai that was reported by former employees.

And the finger is pointed at the management team.

Drive.ai’s founding CEO is Sameep Tandon , who was also Andrew Ng’s Stanford student. He has a good relationship with the other co-founders as alumni and classmates, and has a good reputation internally.

△ Founding CEO Sameep Tandon

But in September 2018, for unknown reasons, Sameep Tandon was forced to resign as CEO and only retained the position of director.

Before and after this, there were more and more discordant voices within Drive.ai.

Later, another old friend of Andrew Ng, Bijit Halder , his old subordinate at Baidu , was recruited by Drive.ai and became the current CEO.

△ Current CEO Bijit Halder

However, the new CEO was unable to convince the team at all, and his reputation in Silicon Valley was not good before. So when the employees suddenly received the news of his sudden appointment, they were furious.

The core reason is that the new CEO is not good at technology, communicating with people, or raising funds.

As a result, Drive.ai's financing progress has not been smooth. Starting from the second quarter of this year, the daily "free lunch" can no longer be provided.

The financial situation is becoming increasingly tight, the overall situation is not good, and new financing seems to be a long way off. An acquisition by Apple is one of the few good options.

But Apple is more interested in a small number of talents, and the acquisition does not include all Drive.ai employees.

In addition, Drive.ai's financing process was not entirely smooth.

Around October 2018, Drive.ai was offered a valuation of US$1 billion, but it did not come true in the end.

The statements of the departing employees once again pointed to the management as being "too greedy". The people in charge believed that the valuation was not high enough and were unwilling to accept it, which also became the core reason why the founding CEO was replaced.

Finally, the team began to obviously fall apart at that time, morale was low, and there was no possibility of a turnaround.

No one expected that the once shining star driverless car company would end up like this.

But this may just be the beginning of a reshuffle in the driverless industry. No new model, new technology, or new industry will always grow in the greenhouse of capital...

Whether it is a mule or a horse, it is time to face the market test.