Ride-hailing company Lyft lost $135.7 million in the third quarter due to the shutdown of autonomous vehicle company Argo AI, in which Lyft had a small stake.
Late last month, Argo AI closed its doors as its main backers, Ford and Volkswagen, pulled their investments in order to focus on more near-term goals like advanced driver assistance systems in passenger vehicles.
Lyft and Argo were working together to test autonomous ride-hailing using Argo’s tech on the Lyft platform. The two companies had launched public robotaxi services in Austin, Texas in September and Miami, Florida in December of last year. Both of those services have now been discontinued, a Lyft spokesperson told TechCrunch.
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Lyft didn’t say how it will change its AV methodology later on, yet the organization has likewise cooperated with Motional, another AV tech organization, to send off robotaxis in Las Vegas in August.
Lyft’s misfortunes caused by the Argo closure just record for about 33% of the organization’s complete misfortunes for the quarter. In Q2, Lyft lost $422.2 million, which is a bigger expense than the $99.7 million in a similar time of 2021 and an overal deficit of $377.2 million in the second quarter of this current year.
A greater piece of Lyft’s misfortunes are owing to $224.1 million in stock-based pay and related finance expenses, an increment from $179.1 million in the subsequent quarter. The increase is connected with the top-up that Lyft gave to representatives when its stock cost declined before in the year, as per a Lyft representative.
Lyft said the increment isn’t yet connected with the rounds of cutbacks from the organization, the first happened in July and the second last week as Lyft attempts to eliminate working costs.
