Ride-hailing company Lyft has acquired augmented reality startup Blue Vision Labs, accelerating the company another step forward in the race to revolutionize transportation through autonomous driving.
Blue Vision, of London, will become part of Lyft's Level 5 division, developing augmented reality, mapping and camera technology for the ride-hailing company's self-driving efforts. This is Lyft's first acquisition in the self-driving market and its first office in the United Kingdom, according to a blog post by Luc Vincent, Lyft's vice president of autonomous technology.
According to TechCrunch, sources familiar with the acquisition valued the investment at around $72 million, plus another $30 million if certain milestones are met. Blue Vision had raised $17 million and had only come out in March, after working quietly on its AR Cloud, a technology that allows developers to create shared augmented reality experiences that were not possible before at an unprecedented scale.
Peter Ondruska, co-founder and CEO of Blue Vision Labs, said one potential application of the AR Cloud is connecting ride-sharing passengers with their drivers by overlaying the car's position onto the rider's smartphone screen in augmented reality. Investors included GV, Accel, Horizons Ventures, SV Angel and more.
In a related development, Lyft unveiled an autonomous test vehicle -- a Ford Fusion Hybrid.
In just over a year, Lyft's Level 5 autonomous vehicle division has expanded to a team of 300 engineers and researchers, Vincent said Tuesday. He also said the team includes autonomy and robotics experts from Waymo, Apple, Tesla, Zoox, Google, Microsoft, Ford and more.
