By Tova Cohen and Ari Rabinovitch
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – U.S. chipmaker Intel <INTC.O> agreed to buy driverless car-technology firm Mobileye <MBLY.N> for $15.3 billion on Monday, positioning itself for a dominant role in the autonomous-driving sector after missing the market for mobile phones.
The $63.54-per-share cash deal marks the largest purchase of a company solely focused on the self-driving sector.
Mobileye’s shares jumped as much as 30 percent to $61.51 in early U.S. trading, while Intel’s shares were down 1.3 percent.
The deal underscores the expanding alliances between automakers and their suppliers as they race to develop self-driving cars, a concept that once seemed a science-fiction dream but is drawing closer to reality.
While Intel is known for hardware chips and Mobileye for collision detection software, the merger promises to create a large portfolio of technologies needed for driverless vehicles.
That includes cameras, sensor chips, in-car networking, roadway mapping, machine learning and cloud software, as well as the data-centers needed to manage all the data involved.
