Mobileye puts Moovit up for sale at steep discount
Once hailed as a cornerstone of its robotaxi vision, the transit app may fetch only a third of its $915 million purchase price.
Six years after acquiring it, Mobileye is putting Moovit up for sale. Calcalist has learned that Mobileye, which is controlled by the American chipmaker Intel, has hired investment bank Barclays to find a buyer for the company, which provides a range of digital services for the transportation sector. Potential buyers are expected to be primarily strategic players with operational synergies, such as Uber, DiDi Global, and Lyft.
The separation from Moovit is unlikely to be a successful exit. Intel acquired Moovit in 2020 for $915 million and integrated it into Mobileye, which was then a fully owned private company. Now, in an optimistic scenario, Moovit is expected to sell for just $300-400 million. The gap in valuation reflects two key dynamics: first, Mobileye and Intel failed to materially improve Moovit’s financial performance, with the company continuing to post annual losses in the tens of millions of dollars; second, the strategic rationale behind the acquisition was never fully realized. This is despite consistent growth in both users and revenue. In that sense, the decision to sell reflects an implicit admission that the acquisition fell short of expectations.
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Mobileye CEO Amnon Shashua and Moovit CEO Nir Bezalel.
(Photos: Moovit and Orel Cohen)
At the time of the acquisition, Mobileye emphasized that access to large-scale mobility data was a key driver behind the deal. Such data was seen as essential for developing autonomous driving systems, both for training algorithms and sensors and for reducing the need for vehicles to “learn” new routes from scratch. Moovit provided precisely this layer through its platform, which allows users to plan and pay for multimodal journeys in one place. In practice, however, this value did not translate into meaningful revenue for Mobileye. In retrospect, the company may have paid a significant premium for an asset that could potentially have been accessed through partnerships or commercial agreements rather than a full acquisition.
The purchase of Moovit was accompanied by considerable enthusiasm from Intel and Mobileye, Intel itself acquired Mobileye in 2017 for $15 billion. Amnon Shashua, Mobileye’s founder and CEO, presented Moovit as a strong strategic investment, while Intel said the deal would accelerate Mobileye’s vision of becoming a provider of autonomous transportation services, including a robotaxi network projected at the time to reach a $160 billion market by 2030.
Since then, Mobileye has shifted its strategy. Rather than operating its own fleet of autonomous taxis, a model in which Moovit was expected to play a direct role, the company now focuses on supplying technology to transportation providers. As part of this pivot, it has signed an agreement with Lyft to launch driverless taxi services in Texas starting in 2026 using its Mobileye Drive system. In addition, Volkswagen and Uber are expected to collaborate on a U.S.-based autonomous taxi initiative powered by Mobileye technology.
Moovit was founded in 2011 by Nir Erez, Roy Bick, and Yaron Evron, and launched its app in 2012. By the time of its sale to Intel, the company had raised approximately $134 million. Its last funding round, in February 2018, valued it at $550 million post-money. Investors included the Gemini VC fund, Ashton Kutcher, the Barkat brothers, Sequoia Capital, Uri Levine, and Vintage Investment Partners.
Initially focused on a free consumer service, Moovit later expanded its business model to provide technology solutions for cities and transit authorities, including tools for mapping, managing, and optimizing public transportation systems. Headquartered in Ness Ziona, the company developed a navigation app that integrates multiple modes of transport. While the core app remains free, it also offers premium services.
Moovit has built one of the world’s largest public transportation data sets and monetizes part of its activity by selling anonymized travel data to municipalities and transit operators. At the time of its acquisition, it operated in 3,100 cities across 102 countries, with more than 800 million cumulative users. Today, it reports 1.7 billion cumulative users across 3,500 cities in 112 countries, with approximately 60 million monthly active users.
Despite this scale, user growth has not translated into a sustainable business model. Revenues have remained in the tens of millions of dollars annually, and the company continues to generate losses. In 2025, Moovit reported revenue of $39 million with a gross margin exceeding 80% (approximately $32 million), but still posted a net loss of $11 million. While losses have narrowed, from $47 million in 2021 and $44 million in 2022 to $17 million in 2023 and around $10-11 million in the past two years, the company has yet to achieve profitability.
Moovit currently employs more than 200 people and generates revenue from several sources. These include consumer payments for transportation services booked through the app, such as buses, trains, scooters, e-bikes, taxis, and shared vehicles, through partnerships with approximately 7,500 transport operators worldwide. The company also generates advertising revenue, though this can detract from the user experience, particularly compared with Google, a major competitor with a more streamlined interface. Moovit’s advantage lies in its real-time transit data, including accurate arrival predictions.
Another revenue stream comes from selling aggregated mobility data, although this business faces regulatory constraints in many markets, limiting its growth potential. According to company projections, user growth is expected to average around 20% annually through 2030, while revenue is projected to grow at roughly 15% per year.
Meanwhile, investors in Mobileye have also expressed dissatisfaction. The company went public on Nasdaq in October 2022 at a valuation of $16.7 billion, with shares priced at $21. The stock later peaked at $40, implying a market capitalization of approximately $33 billion. However, the share price has since fallen to around $7.3, about 73% below its IPO level, giving Mobileye a current market value of roughly $6.1 billion.
