> Ford hired about 550 employees formerly of Argo AI
is pretty weird framing. Did they acquire the company? Or certain parts of it? I'm gonna guess they didn't actually recruit and interview all of them one by one.
Well, Ford (and VW) were major investors in Argo AI.
Argo AI ran out of money, no-one else was willing to put more money in so Argo AI had to shut down.
It looks like Ford effectively acquired the company by hiring all the people (who would otherwise be out of the job) but without actually acquiring the company.
They waited for the company to dissolve and then picked up (most of?) the people. I'm sure it was possible because of the prior investment and relationship with the company.
When you have 500+ people at a startup and they spend 90% of their time working with a single partner on some failed venture it's not surprising they'd end up at the partner. You end up building personal relationships within the partner and the workers there will vouch for you.
It's not like a small startup team with close vested interests doing the exact same project absent the aquihire. The robotaxi thing was very ambitious and shooting for the moon, and now they joined a megacorp with a much more modest long term project with corporate leadership/management.
If the bulk of the Argo leadership staff joined and rehired their teams it'd be different though.
Ford owned Argo in a partnership with VW and recently divested of it with some serious losses, causing Argo to go under. This is a (separate) subsidiary being formed under Ford, but neither an acquisition nor individual hiring.
is pretty weird framing. Did they acquire the company? Or certain parts of it? I'm gonna guess they didn't actually recruit and interview all of them one by one.