DoorDash acquires autonomous vehicle technology company Scotty Labs
Alyssa Clementi
autonomous-car Self-driving car DoorDash
Food delivery platform DoorDash has announced its acquisition of Scotty Labs, a teleoperations company that is currently developing the technology needed for people to remotely control autonomous vehicles. More details of the deal, including how much DoorDash paid, have not been released so far.
Scotty Labs was founded by two immigrants in Silicon Valley 10 years ago, and quickly gained a diverse team of workers and financial backing from notable investors. Scotty's current team hails experience from Apple, SRI International, Cruise Automation, Google, and NASA.
"Our core belief at Scotty has always been that Autonomy + Remote Assistance will be the future of logistics. We have intentionally always considered ourselves to be the anti-hype company and focused intensely on developing core infrastructure and algorithms, with a healthy degree of human intelligence, to ensure the safe deployment of autonomous vehicles," said Tobenna Arodiogbu, Scotty Labs CEO.
As of right now, there have been no clear motives for the acquisition. Speculation has already begun as to what DoorDash plans to do with technology that can remotely control self-driving cars, such as deploying autonomous food delivery vehicles. DoorDash had previously hired the co-founders of Lvl5, which developed technology to create high-resolution maps for self-driving cars.
Arodiogbu continued, "We'll share more updates in the near future but for now, we're really excited to be part of the amazing DoorDash family and looking forward to building something magical together. Thank you all for tuning in to the journey so far."