Woven Planet, Toyota's software and self-driving subsidiary, agreed to buy Level 5, the self-driving car division of ride-hailing company Lyft, for about $550 million in cash. That was $200 million up front and $350 million paid over five years. Lyft agreed to work with Woven Planet on future self-driving services on its network. The combined team had about 1,200 people. The deal Woven Planet Holdings, set up by Toyota in Tokyo to build software for cars and cities, agreed on April 26, 2021 (US time) to buy Lyft's Level 5 self-driving division. Woven Planet paid $200 million in cash up front, and $350 million more over five years, for a total of about $550 million. The deal closed in July 2021. What Toyota got Level 5 was based in Palo Alto and had about 300 engineers working on self-driving software, maps and simulation. Together with Woven Planet's own staff in Tokyo and the US, the business had about 1,200 people. Lyft also signed commercial agreements: Woven Planet could use Lyft's fleet data to train its systems, and the two would work together on future robotaxi services on Lyft's network. Why it happened Self-driving projects were proving slower and more expensive than expected. Uber had sold its self-driving unit to Aurora a few months earlier, and Lyft wanted to cut losses. Toyota, which favors a gradual approach starting with driver-assistance features, wanted more software talent and data without building it all from scratch. What happened next Woven Planet was later renamed Woven by Toyota. Its US self-driving work fed into Toyota's driver-assistance systems and its partnerships with other self-driving companies.
