General Motors (GM) has acquired the technology and majority of the assets of ride-hailing firm Sidecar Technologies.
The acquisition comes about two weeks after GM unveiled a $500m investment in car hailing service provider Lyft to create a network of on-demand autonomous vehicles in the US.
Around 20 of Sidecar’s employees will be transferred to GM, including co-founder and chief technology officer Jahan Khanna. However, Sidecar CEO and co-founder Sunil Paul is not joining GM.
Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Citing a person familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reported that the deal price was less than the nearly $39m that Sidecar raised in its failing effort to compete with its rivals such as Uber and Lyft.
A GM spokesperson said: "In connection with Sidecar ceasing operations, we can confirm that we have attracted Sidecar employees to be integrated into the GM urban mobility team, and acquired certain related assets, for work on our global mobility programmes."
GM and Lyft have agreed to develop a network of on-demand autonomous vehicles that will use the self driving technology created by the companies broad choice of ride-sharing services.
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