By: AP
Intel said Monday that it has purchased Israeli urban mobility startup Moovit for $900 million.
The California-based chipmaker said the purchase buttresses its plan to become a “complete mobility provider.”
The acquisition deepens Intel’s reach in Israel, where the company has spent billions buying other companies, and where it has a chip-making factory.
Intel Corp. paid $15 billion in 2017 for Mobileye, an Israeli company at the forefront of autonomous vehicle technology. That purchase created another major player in self-driving technology and strengthened predictions that autonomous cars will someday come in large numbers and change the way people get around.
Moovit will join the Mobileye team, accelerating its “ability to truly revolutionize transportation,” Intel said.
Headquartered in Ness Ziona, Moovit was founded in 2012 by Nir Erez, Yaron Evron, and Roy Bick and developed the first free crowd-sourced app that provides real-time bus, train, subway, and light rail schedules and offers route options to help users find the quickest, most efficient way to their destinations.
Today, Moovit has over 750 million users on its free mobile and web app, providing mobility options in 3,100 cities, 100 countries, and in 45 languages.
In addition to its public transportation data features, Moovit’s mobility options are quite extensive and include ride-hailing companies (Uber, Lyft, Gett), car-sharing companies (Zipcar, Car2Go), station-based bike-share systems (CitiBike), dockless bikes (JUMP, Mobike), scooters (Circ, Voi, Lyft Scooters, Skip, and others) and Mopeds (Coup, eCooltra, MiMoto).
The company also sells transit data analytics to municipalities and public transport operators through its Smart Transit Suite, a platform that provides real-time information on people’s movement, optimal routes, wait times, locations of buses and trains and other data for network managing.
In February 2018, Intel led a $50 million investment in Moovit and announced a partnership with Mobileye, the Jerusalem-based tech company that develops cutting-edge driving-assistance technologies and which was acquired by Intel in 2017 for over $15 billion – the biggest exit by an Israeli company to date. Mobileye co-founder Professor Amnon Shashua, the senior vice president at Intel Corporation, became a member of Moovit’s board of directors as part of the deal.
Using information from users and bus and train schedules, Moovit’s app provides urban transit solutions, combining public transport schedules and options with taxis, bicycles, electric scooters and more, to provide a comprehensive picture of how best to travel.
“Combining the daily mobility habits and needs of millions of Moovit users with the state-of-the-art, safe, affordable and eco-friendly transportation enabled by self-driving vehicles, we will be able to make cities better places to live in,” said Nir Erez, Moovit’s chief executive.
Moovit has more than 800 million users and services in 3,100 cities across 102 countries, according to Intel.
(AP)
