Amazon has found a strategic partner for the development of drones

This week it became known that Amazon has invested in the developer of drones Aurora - and this is perhaps the most serious move of the company Jeff Bezos in the development of autonomous cars.

Detailed. The funding round, during which Aurora raised a total of $530 million, was led by one of the largest venture capital funds, Sequoia Capital. It is known that Amazon and T. Rowe Price Group also participated in it. Sequoia partner Carl Eschenbach will now join the board of directors of the startup, which was valued at more than $2.5 billion in the deal.

Details of the Amazon-Aurora deal were not disclosed. Amazon explained the investment by saying that autonomous technologies open up opportunities for the corporation to increase the productivity and safety of its employees and partners.
Perhaps Bezos sees the startup as a strategic partner for his giant corporation, writes Bloomberg. Aurora can develop different types of autonomous vehicles - robot carts, cars or something else, says its CEO Chris Urmson. According to him, in this regard, they can adapt to Amazon's plans and help the company organize the delivery of orders around the world.
Choosing Aurora is a good move , given that the company has three of the most famous engineers in the field: CEO Chris Urmson (founder of Google's self-driving project), Product Director Sterling Anderson (led the self-driving project at Tesla), and CTO Drew Bagnell (helped launch Uber drones). The company has already managed to negotiate partnerships with major automakers such as Volkswagen and Hyundai, as well as startup Byton.

Context . Jeff Bezos's company has ventured into the self-driving business before, partnering with Toyota on the e-Palette drone project, hosting a self-driving car race, and promoting its Amazon Web Services software to self-driving car developers. According to CNBC, Amazon is now partnering with startup Embark, which is developing autonomous trucks.

Amazon is also working on creating its own autonomous technologies - as the WSJ wrote in 2017, the company even formed its own team for this. Amazon also experimented with the development of drones, and at the end of January it became known about the launch of unmanned carts for delivery of orders called Scout (although this option is currently only available in test mode to residents of Washington State).
In 2018, Amazon's shipping costs increased by 27% to $27.7 billion. Over time, the company plans to reduce its dependence on third-party logistics services like FedEx and develop its own supply chain.
In California, at least 62 companies already have permission to test self-driving cars. With funding, Waymo (part of Alphabet), Cruise (a General Motors structure) and a consortium of Zoox, Aurora and Argo AI (owned by Ford Motor) are doing the best.

Liana Faizova