Mobileye went public last fall, and in its prospectus for investors, the Israeli driver assistance systems specialist pointed to a development that sounded worrying among the usual risk factors.

Some automakers that would previously have used Mobileye's technology are now using, or at least working on, their own systems.

Tesla, Mercedes-Benz and General Motors were given as examples.

Amnon Shashua, the co-founder and CEO of Mobileye, also sees a reverse trend, as he says in an interview with the FAZ at CES.

Roland Lindner

Business correspondent in New York.

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There would be companies that would have loudly professed to develop their own technology a few years ago, but have now come back to Mobileye and admitted that they underestimated the challenge.

He doesn't want to name any examples, but Shashua's description makes one think of the Volkswagen Group, which with its software division Cariad had set the goal of dramatically increasing its own share in the development, but then stumbled and scaled back its ambitions again.

Mobileye is already working with VW, and there is speculation in the industry about a deepening of the alliance.

When asked about this, Shashua does not confirm this, but he does give a hint: "I think more information will come in the next few months or weeks."

Happy about the return to the stock exchange

Shashua describes the IPO as an important moment.

It was a comeback, as the company, founded in 1999, went public once before in 2014.

Three years later, it was sold to American semiconductor giant Intel for more than $15 billion.

Then, about a year ago, Intel decided to bring Mobileye back to the stock market, and Shashua says he's glad it did.

On the one hand, life under the Intel roof was "very practical".

He had the freedom to invest a lot, and since the takeover by Intel the workforce has roughly quadrupled to 3,100 employees.

Mobileye was also supported in product development by Intel with technology and staff.

On the other hand, Mobileye's own successes have remained "under the radar".

The IPO now brings more public “visibility”, and it is also good to have your own shares again and thus a kind of currency.

The IPO was bumpy and took place in the midst of a very difficult environment, with many other companies putting their IPO plans on hold.

Intel was forced to significantly downgrade its expectations for Mobileye's valuation, but decided to go through with the IPO.

Since then, the stock has performed passably and better than the market as a whole.

The stock is trading well above the IPO price today, and the company is valued at around $24 billion.

Intel remains the majority shareholder.

The car manufacturers as “true customers”

Mobileye develops technology for driver assistance systems and autonomous driving, including both software and hardware in the form of semiconductors.

The flagship product is called EyeQ.

The biggest customers are not the car manufacturers themselves, but their suppliers.

By far the most important customer is ZF, the German company accounted for more than 40 percent of all Mobileye sales in the first half of 2022.

The prospectus even listed it as a risk factor that Mobileye generates a large part of its sales with a very small number of suppliers.

But Shashua reassured him that he didn't see it as a great danger.

Even if Mobileye sells its products to the suppliers, in the end the car manufacturers are the "real customers" and thus a better indicator of the "health" of the business.

With them, Mobileye is represented across the board; last year, 233 new car models with the company's technology came onto the market.

Some disillusionment has recently set in around autonomous driving, the relevant technologies have been a long time coming than promises in the industry in the meantime gave rise to hope.

Shashua says, “It's like a pendulum.

Four to five years ago people were saying self-driving cars were coming soon, now the pendulum is swinging the other way and they are saying it won't be until 2050.”

At times, automakers feared waking up without buyers because humans were all driving around in robotic taxis.

Today they had realized that their business would not be threatened in the foreseeable future.

In the meantime, they would have the chance to upgrade their products themselves with autonomous driving technology.

In the meantime, no matter how far the road to a fully autonomous future may be, Shashua sees a large market for assistance systems that relieve drivers of a lot of work without making them completely redundant.

Mobileye, for example, released a technology called Supervision just over a year ago, which Shashua sees as a sort of "bridge" to the autonomous future.

It allows drivers to take their hands off the wheel, even if they need to keep their eyes on the road.

At the same time, Mobileye is also working on technologies for robot taxis.

A testing ground for this is Germany.

According to the company, a few days ago it received approval to expand a pilot project with self-driving cars in Germany.

However, a safety driver will remain on board for the time being.