Apple buys self-driving car start-up Drive AI

Drive AI was about to close.

Apple has purchased self-driving car start-up Drive AI to accelerate its development of autonomous technology. The California-based tech giant refused to reveal how much it paid for its latest acquisition.

Drive AI is one of the dozens of companies founded relatively recently to develop the technology needed to fuel self-driving cars. It had inked a deal with city officials in Arlington, Texas, to offer members of the general public rides in its Nissan-based autonomous shuttles, and it raised $77 million during its last round of financing. However, all was not well under the surface, and Drive AI told California regulators that it planned to shut down in the coming days, laying off 90 people.

Apple confirmed the purchase to CNBC, but it hasn't revealed anything else; we don't know what it plans on doing with Drive AI. It could run it as a standalone division, or it could fold it into its own self-driving car division, which lags far behind rivals like Waymo and Uber. Apple's Lexus-based autonomous prototypes are regularly seen testing in Silicon Valley.

Apple's ambitions in the automotive industry are equally murky. The general consensus is that it no longer want to build its own car, and it prefers to instead develop a toolkit it can sell to automakers. This strategy makes sense, because it's far less labor-intensive than designing a car from scratch.