U.S. microprocessor giant Intel said Monday that it has agreed to buy Mobileye, an Israeli developer of driverless technologies, for 15.3 billion U.S. dollars, a record sum for an Israeli high-tech firm.
The deal is the world's largest acquisition of a company that focuses only on the field of automated driving systems.
Jerusalem-based Mobileye accounts for about two-thirds of the global market of advanced driver assistance systems.
Intel said it expects to conclude the deal within the next few months.
The U.S.-based chip giant said it hopes the move will create a car combining Intel's cloud technology and Mobileye's autonomous driving systems.
"Mobileye brings the industry's best automotive-grade computer vision," Brian Krzanich, chief executive officer of Intel, said in a statement.
"Together, we can accelerate the future of autonomous driving with improved performance in a cloud-to-car solution at a lower cost for automakers," he added.
Intel expects the union to "accelerate innovation for the automotive industry and position Intel as a leading technology provider in the fast-growing market for highly and fully autonomous vehicles," according to the statement.
The U.S. company estimates that the vehicle systems, data and services market will be worth up to 70 billion dollars by 2030.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz also welcomed the deal.
Writing on his Facebook page, Katz congratulated the companies for the "historic" deal, saying he plans to invest the income tax expected from the transaction in installing lifesaving systems in every car in Israel.
Intel and Mobileye have already collaborated in a project with BMW Group.
On January 4, the two companies announced they are joining forces to put a fleet of 40 self-driving test cars on the roads by the second half of 2017.
Mobileye's technology combines a camera and a chip that are used as a "third eye" to collect information about pathways and landscapes to help drivers prevent collisions and accidents.
The company was established in 1999 by Ziv Aviram and Amnon Shashua, a computer science professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 2014, it launched its first shares offering in the New York Stock Exchange.
