Intel Corporation announced it has acquired Israeli mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) company Moovit for approximately $900 million. Moovit’s product is an urban mobility app with particular focus on public transit that helps travelers planning their daily commute by combining public transportation, bicycle and scooter services, ride-hailing, and car-sharing.
According to Intel, the app is used by 800 million customers and transit services in 3,100 cities across 102 countries.
This is the second highly visible acquisition of an Israeli company by Intel. In 2017, Intel acquired Mobileye, a provider of computer vision for autonomous driving technology, for $15.3 billion — the biggest-ever acquisition of an Israeli tech company. Moovit will join the Mobileye business unit and will retain its brand and existing partnerships.
Intel gets it. Future urban mobility will be a synchronized multi-modal, multi-vehicle system that is optimized around the needs and habits of individual commuters while optimizing the use of mobility resources and reducing environmental impact.
This is in stark contrast to the outdated vehicle-centric model that was born decades ago with GM’s OnStar system and continues to influence how automakers are designing vehicles and human-machine interaction systems.
The acquisition of Moovit is a good move for Intel as it continues to pivot away from being a provider of computer chips to a data-centric company that serves the needs of the smart transportation systems that will be the central pillar of the smart cities of tomorrow. Intel wants to deliver hardware and software platforms across strategic areas, including artificial intelligence, IoT and autonomous operations that will be built into tomorrow’s smart mobility systems and used by always-connected consumers.