Ford, Volkwagen end self-driving operations, Argo closed

Argo AI, the self-driving tech start-up that had received significant financial backing from Ford and Volkswagen, has shut down.

The company, based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania which proudly proclaimed it was “reimagining the human journey,” confirmed the news in a short statement.

It read: “In coordination with our shareholders, the decision has been made that Argo AI will not continue on its mission as a company. Many of the employees will receive an opportunity to continue work on automated driving technology with either Ford or Volkswagen, while employment for others will unfortunately come to an end.”

Although the high costs of developing automated tech have come under constant scrutiny – in July, for example, General Motors announced it was losing $5 million a day on its self-driving subsidiary Cruise – the news is still something of a shock, with no suggestion in recent weeks that an announcement of this nature was in the offing.

It was only in September that Argo AI published details of the product line-up it intended to offer businesses who wanted to use its automated driving system, and in October it was confirmed that self-driving Ford Escapes using the company’s tech would be offered on the Lyft ride-hailing network in Austin, Texas.

But behind the scenes, all was evidently not well, with Argo AI struggling to attract additional investment beyond the millions already injected by Ford and Volkswagen. Since its founding in 2016, it had received around a billion dollars from the U.S. company and $2.6 billion from the German giant.

And now the automakers have pulled the plug.

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