Intel’s Mobileye has a plan to dominate self-driving—and it might work

Enlarge / Mobileye CEO Amnon Shashua. (credit: Walden Kirsch/Intel Corporation)

A lot of media coverage of self-driving technology has focused on a handful of big companies with well-known brands: Google, Uber, Tesla, and GM. But there’s another company working on self-driving technology that might ultimately prove even more important. That company is Mobileye, an Israeli startup that was acquired by Intel in 2017.

Mobileye doesn’t have Elon Musk’s star power or Google’s billions. But it has something that’s arguably even more important: a dominant position in today’s market for advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS). Mobileye had a very public split with Tesla back in 2016, but it continues to do business with a lot of other carmakers. Mobileye says it shipped 17.4 million systems last year, which means 17.4 million customers bought cars with Mobileye’s cameras, chips, and software.

In a Tuesday speech at the Consumer Electronics show, Mobileye CEO Amnon Shashua made clear just how big of a strategic advantage this is. He laid out Mobileye’s vision for the evolution of self-driving technology over the next five years. And he made it clear that he envisions Mobileye staying at the center of the industry.