Toyota to invest about $500 million in Uber for driverless cars

Toyota Motor Corp will invest about $500 million in Uber Technologies Inc to jointly work on developing driverless vehicles, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The investment valued Uber at about $72 billion, WSJ reported. Toyota’s U.S. listed shares rose 3.2 percent in volume spike in afternoon trading.

Toyota and Uber were not immediately available for comment.

Earlier this year, a group of investors led by Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp invested in Uber, as Softbank became its largest shareholder.

Carmakers, tech companies and other service providers have taken to partnering on self-driving projects over past two years, due to the difficulty and high cost of developing such technology alone.

In May, SoftBank said it will invest $2.25 billion in General Motors Co’s autonomous vehicle unit Cruise.

wsj.com