Lyft will sell its self-driving car unit to Woven Planet, a subsidiary of Toyota, for $550 million in cash, the companies announced Monday.
Shares of Lyft rose more than 2% after hours.
As part of the deal, Lyft and Woven Planet will work together on enhancing automated driving technology safety, according to a release.
“Not only will this transaction allow Lyft to focus on advancing our leading Autonomous platform and transportation network, this partnership will help pull in our profitability timeline,” Lyft Co-Founder and President John Zimmer said in a statement.
The company expects the deal will remove $100 million of annualized non-GAAP operating expenses on a net basis, according to the release. Because of that, Zimmer added that if the deal closes when expected in the third quarter and recovery from the pandemic continues, Lyft expects to become profitable on an adjusted EBITDA basis in Q3.
The announcement comes just a few months after Lyft rival Uber sold its own self-driving unit to start-up Aurora, backed by firms including Hyundai and Amazon. The deal valued the unit around $4 billion and included a $400 million investment by Uber into Aurora.
