Argo AI
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Autonomous vehicle technology |
| Founded | 2016 |
| Founder | Bryan Salesky, Peter Rander |
| Defunct | 2022 |
| Fate | Closed, assets and personnel reassigned to Ford and Volkswagen |
| Headquarters | Pittsburgh , United States |
Area served | United States, Germany (Munich) |
Key people | Bryan Salesky (CEO), Peter Rander (President) |
| Products | Autonomous driving software, hardware, mapping solutions, cloud services |
Number of employees | Over 1,000 (mid-2020) |
| Parent | Ford Motor Company (42%), Volkswagen Group (42%), Lyft (2.5%) |
Argo AI LLC was a company specializing in autonomous vehicle technologies, headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Established in 2016 by industry experts Bryan Salesky and Peter Rander, both with backgrounds in Google and Uber self-driving initiatives, Argo AI focused on creating software, hardware, mapping solutions, and cloud services to support autonomous driving. The enterprise received major financial backing from Ford Motor Company (42%) starting in 2017 and from the Volkswagen Group (42%) beginning in 2020, with a smaller investment stake of 2.5% held by Lyft. At its zenith, Argo AI's valuation reached $7 billion.
In October 2022, Ford declared the closure of Argo AI, reallocating certain personnel to Ford and Volkswagen. Both automakers intend to incorporate and advance Argo’s autonomous driving innovations internally. Ford adjusted its approach by shifting focus from Level 4 autonomy toward enhancing Level 3 and Level 2+ advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS).
Establishment
Argo AI was launched in November 2016 by robotics specialists Bryan Salesky, who served as CEO, and Peter Rander, the company president. By mid-2020, the workforce had grown to over 1,000 employees distributed among offices in Pittsburgh, Detroit, Palo Alto, Cranbury (NJ), and Munich. As of June 2020, the company’s valuation stood at $7.25 billion.
Salesky, originally from near Detroit and operating out of Pittsburgh, earned his Bachelor of Science in Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh in 2002. His early career included developing anti-collision systems for trains at Union Switch & Signal before joining Carnegie Mellon’s National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC), where Rander was his supervisor. Salesky co-directed Carnegie Mellon’s software team for the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge and later served as hardware development director at Google’s self-driving car project (now Waymo) from 2013 to 2016.
Rander hails from Michigan and graduated from the University of Detroit Mercy before completing his MS and Ph.D. in Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. He collaborated with Salesky at NREC and was engineering lead for Uber’s Advanced Technology Group (ATG) during 2015–2016.
Argo AI secured initial seed funding toward the end of 2016. In February 2017, Ford Motor Company committed $1 billion over five years to develop a virtual driver system for autonomous vehicles, becoming Argo AI’s primary investor. This capital infusion allowed Argo AI to expand its team by approximately 200 employees, including personnel transferred from Ford’s research and development division.
Volkswagen funding and company closure
In June 2020, Volkswagen invested $2.6 billion into Argo AI, providing $1 billion in cash to support both Argo AI and its Munich-based Autonomous Intelligent Driving (AID) subsidiary, which was valued at $1.6 billion. The AID unit employed over 200 staff focused on autonomous driving technologies for Volkswagen vehicles. The agreement included Volkswagen purchasing Argo AI shares from Ford totaling $500 million over three years; meanwhile, Ford contributed the remaining $600 million of its initial $1 billion pledge. The Munich AID team was integrated into Argo AI as its European engineering hub.
Together with these strategic partnerships, Argo AI raised upwards of $3.6 billion in funding. Ownership was evenly divided between Ford and Volkswagen at 42% each. The board composition in 2017 consisted of two representatives each from Ford and Volkswagen alongside three members from Argo.
Lyft invested in Argo in July 2021 to facilitate deployment of autonomous services on its ride-hailing platforms in Austin and Miami, which increased Argo's valuation to $12.4 billion.
In March 2022, Argo inaugurated a new engineering and development center located in Los Angeles.
By October 2022, after unsuccessful attempts to obtain additional funding from Amazon, Ford announced it would dissolve Argo AI following an $827 million net loss recorded in Q3. Ford incurred a $2.7 billion accounting charge along with writing off roughly $500 million of its investment; Volkswagen recorded expenses amounting to €1.9 billion.
Several assets and personnel from Argo AI were reassigned to Ford’s Latitude AI ADAS initiative and Volkswagen’s ADAS division CARIAD. Volkswagen continued advancing autonomous vehicle technology using its ID BUZZ platform together with Mobileye as an alternative supplier for self-driving systems.
Technology
Argo engineered Self-Driving Systems (SDS) with Level 4 autonomy capabilities, integrating software, computing hardware, sensors, cameras, radar, and LIDAR technologies. In 2017, the company expanded its expertise by acquiring Princeton Lightwave, a firm specializing in lidar technology. By 2019, Argo unveiled its third-generation prototype vehicle built on the Ford Fusion Hybrid platform, which incorporated upgraded cameras, enhanced processing capacity, and superior thermal regulation. The company primarily concentrated on deploying autonomous solutions for shared mobility fleets, including ride-hailing and logistics delivery.
Road testing
Argo carried out autonomous vehicle trials across multiple cities such as Pittsburgh, Dearborn, Michigan, Miami, Washington, D.C., Austin, and Palo Alto. This geographic diversification allowed the firm to study a broad spectrum of driving patterns and roadway conditions. Their testing regimen involved millions of simulated scenarios addressing various weather conditions, infrastructure elements, and pedestrian interactions. By 2021, Argo had extended public road testing to Munich with the VW IDBUZZ. In May 2022, the company initiated fully driverless operations in Miami and Austin using adapted Ford Escape Hybrids.
University research
Beginning in 2017, Argo collaborated with Carnegie Mellon University and the Georgia Institute of Technology to enhance computer vision and machine learning capabilities.
In June 2019, Argo pledged $15 million over a five-year period to create the Carnegie Mellon University Argo AI Center for Autonomous Vehicle Research. This center concentrated on developing sophisticated algorithms for perception and decision-making in self-driving cars. This initiative followed Argo’s release of an open-source curated map dataset intended to support autonomous vehicle research and development. As of 2020, the center’s research focused on smart sensor fusion, three-dimensional scene interpretation, urban environment simulation, map-based perception techniques, behavior forecasting, and software verification.