Microsoft Partners With General Motors To Build Autonomous Cars

JAKARTA - Driverless car startup, Cruise, which is part of a subsidiary of General Motors (GM), today announced an injection of US $ 2 billion from Microsoft, Honda and GM.

Microsoft is a giant company that is Cruise's main investor. With an injection of funds from investors, the company's budget has skyrocketed by around US $ 20 billion as it has netted one of the tech giants. As a result, GM shares rose nearly seven percent.

However, money isn't the only thing at play here. Referring to the Reuters report, Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella said that the company will provide cloud services for Cruise.

"As the cloud of choice for Cruise and GM, we will apply Azure's power in helping them scale and mainstream autonomous transportation," Nadella said.

Microsoft Azure is quietly becoming a technology giant. As well as being able to beat Amazon in the Project Jedi contract from the US government, the company recently signed a US $ 2 billion contract deal with OpenAI to buy GitHub.

Google worked hard to develop autonomous vehicles for years with Waymo. However, the market was not moving as fast as investors had hoped. Between COVID-19 and the company's unrealistic expectations, not a single self-driving vehicle has yet been licensed for massive use on the roads.

Microsoft is predicted to squeeze market profits as AI makers vacillate between big moments. Driverless cars are only a few months away from rolling onto the market.

Current market conditions make Tesla turn left as it continues to strive to present an autonomous vehicle without the help of LIDAR or similar systems. Meanwhile, Cruise, Waymo and a number of other companies are continuing to develop more robust systems in the hope of being able to complete self-driving AI.

Even so, there is nothing better than good competition to spark innovation. Now that Cruise has greater support from Microsoft, this is why the company can be optimistic, as reported by TheNextWeb.