Mobileye is using its balance sheet to step outside automotive autonomy and into humanoid robotics. The Intel-owned ADAS and autonomous driving specialist said it will acquire Mentee Robotics for EUR 855 million, in a deal announced on January 6, 2026 during CES in Las Vegas.
The transaction is explicitly framed as a platform shift. CEO Amnon Shashua described the move as “Mobileye 3.0” and positioned it as an entry into humanoid robots, with the combined business aiming to build “physical AI” that can operate across both robots and autonomous vehicles.
Deal terms and what is known
Mobileye disclosed consideration of $900 million, comprised of roughly $612 million in cash and 26.2 million shares of Mobileye common stock. The euro figure cited here (EUR 855 million) reflects the announced deal amount. Other key items remain undisclosed in the public reporting, including regulatory timeline, governance for the acquired unit, and any retention or earn-out mechanics.
Why this is an against-trend deal
Most autonomy-adjacent strategies over the past 12-18 months have tilted toward cost control, narrower product roadmaps, and clearer near-term monetisation. Mobileye is doing the opposite: buying a pre-revenue robotics company and committing publicly to an aggressive commercialization schedule.
Mentee Robotics was co-founded by Shashua in 2022 and has developed a “third-generation, vertically integrated humanoid robot.” The company reportedly has no revenue. That combination, early-stage economics paired with a large headline price, reads as a deliberate bet on category creation rather than incremental adjacency.
Strategic rationale: extending autonomy into factories
Mobileye’s core franchise was built by supplying automakers with computer vision chips for safety features and advanced driver assistance systems, later expanding into autonomous driving via chips and software. The Mentee acquisition extends that autonomy stack from roads to industrial environments.
Management’s thesis, as described in reporting, is that Mentee’s humanoid platform and deep AI talent can be paired with Mobileye’s strengths in automotive autonomy, AI productisation, and scaling into production. Mobileye also highlighted potential customer synergies: automakers already buying its driver-assistance systems could become customers for factory automation robots.
That customer overlap is the most concrete commercial bridge in the announcement. If real, it could shorten go-to-market cycles versus a cold-start push into industrial automation.
Integration: the real determinant of value
The success case rests less on headline AI ambition and more on execution capacity. Key integration questions include:
- Operating model: Will Mentee remain a semi-autonomous R&D unit or be integrated into Mobileye’s product and engineering cadence?
- Systems and productisation: Robotics requires industrial-grade reliability, service tooling, and field support. Mobileye’s “global production expertise” is relevant, but translating automotive-grade processes into robotics deployments is non-trivial.
- Leadership depth and key-person risk: Shashua co-founded Mentee and leads Mobileye. Clear delegation and accountability will matter to avoid bottlenecks across two frontier roadmaps.
- Go-to-market overlap vs distraction: Leveraging automaker relationships could accelerate pilots, but industrial buyers will demand ROI clarity, safety certification pathways, and service-level commitments.
Timeline: fast by robotics standards
Mobileye expects first on-site proof-of-concept deployments with customers in 2026 and is targeting series production and commercialization by 2028. That is a compressed schedule for humanoid robotics, particularly when moving from prototype capability to repeatable manufacturing, safety validation, and support.
The company has indicated initial industrial use cases such as logistics centres and manufacturing lines. This focus is pragmatic: bounded environments with structured tasks typically provide a clearer path to measurable productivity gains than consumer or general-purpose deployments.
What to watch next
- Disclosure on integration structure: reporting lines, leadership appointments, and whether Mentee is folded into Mobileye product units.
- Pilot details in 2026: named customers, site types, and what “proof-of-concept” success metrics look like.
- Manufacturing and supply chain plan: where robots will be built, how components are sourced, and capex implications.
- Commercial model: unit pricing vs robotics-as-a-service, service obligations, and gross margin targets.
- Roadmap discipline: whether the humanoid push complements or competes for resources with Mobileye’s core ADAS and AV programs.