Amazon gets serious about self-driving cars by dropping more than $1 billion on Zoox

Amazon, like Waymo, Uber, and Tesla, appears to want to build fleets of autonomous cars. 

The retail giant acquired self-driving startup Zoox for more than $1 billion, The Information reported Friday. The Financial Times has a similar report, claiming that the actual value of the acquisition is more than $1.2 billion. 

Zoox itself confirmed the news in an Instagram post. “We are delighted to announce that Zoox is teaming up with @amazon. We have made great strides in creating autonomous mobility from the ground up, and are excited to continue working with our exceptionally talented team to realize that vision,” the post says. 

The Wall Street Journal reported on the acquisition talks in May, though the deal wasn’t finished at the time. 

Zoox, which is headquartered in California and has more than 1,000 employees, has spent the last six years working on technology that would allow a “fully autonomous” car to drive both on city roads and highways, with advanced features such as yielding to pedestrians, passing double parked vehicles, and making “unprotected” left and right turns at red traffic lights, according to the company.

Zoox hasn’t unveiled its prototype publicly yet, though, and The Information claims the company pushed back plans to launch a robotaxi service this year as its software isn’t ready. 

Amazon has dabbled in self-driving technology — for example, it invested in startup Aurora in 2019 — but this acquisition is more serious. It’s one of the company’s biggest investments ever, after Whole Foods and Zappos, which Amazon bought for $13.4 billion and $1.2 billion, respectively. The Information claims that Amazon will likely have to invest billions more to bring Zoox cars onto the streets.