Uber Acquires Segments.ai to Grow Data Labeling Business

Uber has acquired Segments.ai, a multi-sensor labeling platform for robotics and autonomous driving, the two companies said Thursday (Oct. 2) in separate posts on LinkedIn.

In its post, Uber AI Solutions, Uber’s AI data services business, said that the acquisition is part of its commitment to building its lidar and multi-sensor data annotation capabilities. The company said it has been working in this area for nearly a decade to use labels on real-world data to power autonomy, safety and artificial intelligence breakthroughs.

“Segments.ai brings solid experience in lidar annotation tools, deep expertise in the domain, and an incredible base of clients,” the post said. “We are thrilled to be working with [Segments.ai CEO and Founder Otto Debals and Founder Bert De Brabandere] and the entire team as we build the future together for lidar data annotation.”

Debals said in a post on LinkedIn that he, De Brabandere and the entire team will join Uber AI Solutions and continue building annotation tooling for robotics and autonomous vehicles.

“We’ve supported awesome use cases: from self-driving vehicles and trucks to autonomous drones and tractors,” Debals said of Segments.ai, which was founded in 2020.

De Brabandere said in a post on LinkedIn that at Uber AI Solutions, they will “help supercharge the data labeling team.”

Uber AI Solutions offers other businesses solutions that Uber developed over the past decade while using data and AI in its own operations.

The organization said in June that it added new solutions and began making them available to AI labs and enterprises in 30 countries.

One solution is a platform that connects enterprises to global talent, including experts in coding, finance, law, science and linguistics, who can provide annotation, translation and editing for multilingual and multimodal content.

Uber AI Solutions also offers datasets to train large AI models for generative AI, mapping, speech recognition and other uses cases; task flows, annotations, simulations and multilingual support to help train AI agents; and its own internal platforms for managing large-scale annotation projects and validating AI inputs.

“We’re bringing together Uber’s platform, people and AI systems to help other organizations build smarter AI more quickly,” Megha Yethadka, general manager and head of Uber AI Solutions, said in a June press release.

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