Apple buys self-driving startup Drive.ai just days before it would have died

Drive.ai, a self-driving startup that was once valued at $200 million, was supposedly closing its doors and laying off all its staff — but Apple has now confirmed to Axios and The Verge that it’s acquired the struggling startup instead.
Three weeks ago, Apple was said to be in talks to buy Drive.ai, which was founded in 2015 by machine learning researchers from Stanford University and had been running a ride-hailing service with its autonomous shuttles in Texas. The deal could have resulted in dozens of Drive.ai engineers joining the tech giant’s secretive Project Titan, which has gone through its own struggles.
But earlier today, it seemed like that deal had fallen through. The Mountain View, Calif.-based Drive.ai filed notice with a…

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