Uber’s Aggressive Business Move A Bid For Survival, Acquires Startup For $680M

Uber is really stepping up its game recently, with what almost seems like a desperate move to secure the self-driving sector. After making a deal with Volvo, the cab hailing company spent $680 million to acquire the autonomous trucking startup Otto. This becomes less surprising, however, with Uber’s CEO believing that his company needs to be first or it becomes last.

In a recent interview with Business Insider, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick explained that the company’s aggressive effort at becoming the first to deploy fully autonomous cabs in the market is essential to its survival.

"If we are not tied for first, then the person who is in first, or the enemy that's in first, then rolls out a ride-sharing network that is far cheaper or far higher-quality than Uber's, then Uber is no longer a thing," Kalanick stated.

This is the reason behind the recent announcement that Uber will start releasing self-driving Ford and Volvo cars in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania in a matter of weeks, which effectively makes the cab hailing company the first to commercially utilize the technology. Not content with that, the company also acquired the self-driving truck startup called Otto.

Otto was actually founded by former employees of Google and it was working on creating viable self-driving technology that could be applied to trucks. As Recode pointed out, this is an odd deal for several reasons.

First is the fact that Otto did not need to be acquired by anyone since the startup just recently came out of the shadows. Secondly, Uber is not known for its goals of being in the trucking business.

What does make the acquisition make sense, however, is the potential for jumpstarting the self-driving technology that Uber will be in possession of, thus allowing the cab hailing service to further improve on what currently exists. This could give them an edge over Apple, Google, or Tesla, all of which are rivals that Kalanick views as threats.