Uber to Invest Over $150 Million in Toronto Driverless Car Hub

(Bloomberg) -- Uber Technologies Inc. said it will spend more than $150 million in Toronto to support driverless car research.

The five-year investment includes opening an engineering hub in Canada’s biggest city in early 2019 and an expansion of its Advanced Technologies Group, the unit that’s developing much of the company’s autonomous vehicle technology. Last year, Uber began building an artificial intelligence team in Toronto. Including ride-sharing and food delivery businesses, Uber said it will have more than 500 employees in the city in coming years.

The investment, presented by Uber Chief Executive Officer Dara Khosrowshahi, is another vote of confidence in Toronto’s tech scene, which created more jobs than the San Francisco Bay area, Seattle and Washington, combined last year.

Toronto has made a name for itself in AI. The University of Toronto is a leader in the field and a magnet for companies including Google, which invested in a prominent AI lab in the city called the Vector Institute.

“We recognize Canada’s commitment to innovation and the vibrancy of Toronto’s tech ecosystem,” Khosrowshahi said. “We want to support the innovation coming out of this great, diverse region.”

Uber’s ATG center in Toronto is the company’s first self-driving vehicle office outside the U.S. and the eighth engineering center outside the U.S.

To contact the reporter on this story: Natalie Wong in Toronto at nwong133@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Daniel Taub at dtaub@bloomberg.net, Alistair Barr, Andrew Pollack

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