Microsoft wants to be the next technology company to get involved in the self-driving car business. The Windows giant is participating in a two billion dollar financing round of the robotaxi company Cruise of the auto company General Motors, as the company announced on Tuesday.

Cruise was given a total of 30 Billion dollars. The company has been testing its vehicles in San Francisco for years and has already presented the prototype of an autonomous taxi without space for a driver. Among other things, Microsoft wants to bring services from its cloud platform Azure to the partnership – which Cruise will mainly use in the future. In addition to the parent company GM, the Japanese car manufacturer Honda is also participating in the financing round.

Straggler Microsoft The other big tech companies are already very active in this area: The Google sister company Waymo applies As a leading developer of Robotaxi technology, Apple is also working on systems for autonomous driving and its own car, Amazon bought the robot car developer Zoox and placed it in its device division. Cruise got approval last year to put cars on the streets of San Francisco without a security driver behind the wheel. Waymo and Zoox had also previously been given permission to drive on public roads without people behind the wheel. Cruise originally announced the start of a Robotaxi offer for 2019, but then postponed the date indefinitely.

(emw)