Mobileye built its business by putting vision chips into millions of vehicles: these chips power safety features and driver-assistance systems used by automakers worldwide. Over time, this work created scale, steady revenue, and a strong position in the automotive industry.
The company later expanded into autonomous driving. This move stayed close to its original mission while increasing its technical ambition. Vehicles remained the focus, but the scope widened. This focus is now shifting.
At CES in Las Vegas, Mobileye introduced what co-founder and president Amnon Shashua calls “Mobileye 3.0.” This new phase moves beyond cars and toward intelligent systems that operate in the physical world. The announcement was tied to a major acquisition.
Subsequently, Mobileye agreed to acquire Mentee Robotics, a humanoid robotics startup co-founded by Shashua in 2022, for $900 million.
The deal includes $612 million in cash and up to 26.2 million shares of Mobileye stock. Shashua, who is chairman, co-founder, and a major shareholder of Mentee, stepped back from board discussions and approvals. The transaction was approved by Mobileye’s board and Intel, its largest shareholder.
The acquisition is expected to close in the first quarter. Mobileye says it will only slightly increase operating expenses in 2026.
Mentee Robotics will remain an independent unit within Mobileye. While the two companies will remain separate on paper, close collaboration is likely.
Why Mentee Robotics?
Mentee stands out for its focus on making humanoid robots practical, scalable, and affordable from the start. In just four years, the company has built a cost-efficient humanoid platform that tightly integrates its own hardware and software, avoiding reliance on expensive data collection or constant human control.
Its learning system is designed to learn new skills from natural human demonstrations and intent, enabling robots to improve over time while maintaining predictable, safe interactions.
The company’s core advantage lies in rapid learning with real-world usefulness. Mentee’s robots are built to operate autonomously out of the box, with strong scene understanding, natural instruction following, and reliable movement and manipulation.
As development advances toward few-shot learning, these systems are expected to learn new tasks from just a handful of demonstrations, enabling faster deployment across many environments as both productivity tools and collaborative partners.
Mobileye says the deal expands its work into “Physical Artificial Intelligence.” This refers to systems that understand context and intent, and interact naturally with humans and the physical environment. The goal is to apply skills developed for vehicles to humanoid robots.
For Mentee, the benefits are clear. It gains access to Mobileye’s capital, computing power, and AI training infrastructure, such as resources most robotics startups do not have.
A risky bet at humanoid robotics?
Developing humanoid robots will be expensive and time-consuming. Mobileye can take on this risk because its automotive business remains strong.
The company estimates its current automotive revenue pipeline at $24.5 billion over the next eight years. This figure is driven by advanced driver assistance and vehicle autonomy programs. It is more than 40% higher than it was in January 2023.
EyeQ6H-based systems on the rise
A day before the acquisition announcement, Mobileye revealed a deal with a top-10 automaker to supply 9 million EyeQ6H-based Surround ADAS systems. Volkswagen Group had already committed to using the same chip.
Mobileye now expects to deliver more than 19 million EyeQ6H-based systems. This stable base allows the company to explore new directions without abandoning what already works.
“Today marks a new chapter for robotics and automotive AI, and the beginning of Mobileye 3.0,” said Prof. Amnon Shashua, President and CEO of Mobileye. “By combining Mentee’s breakthroughs in humanoid robotics with Mobileye’s expertise in automotive autonomy, and its proven ability to productise advanced AI, we have a unique opportunity to lead the evolution of physical AI across robotics and autonomous vehicles on a global scale.”
Prof. Lior Wolf, CEO of Mentee Robotics, said: “I am immensely proud of what Mentee’s multidisciplinary team has accomplished in just four years. We set out to build a platform that combines cutting-edge AI with deeply integrated hardware to make humanoid robots truly useful in real-world environments. Joining forces with Mobileye gives us access to unparalleled AI infrastructure and commercialisation expertise, accelerating our mission to bring scalable, safe, and cost-effective humanoid solutions to market.”
