Last summer, BMW and Intel and Mobileye formed a three-way partnership to develop autonomous vehicles.
Last month, Mercedes-Benz and Bosch and NVIDIA joined forces for a similar partnership.
Triads seem to be a thing in self-driving cars.
Except now that Intel has acquired Mobileye, that triad has turned into a diad.
Not to worry, however, Delphi has joined the BMW-Intel partnership, so the rule of three is in force and all is right with the world.
What does all this really mean on the ground?
Scott McNealy once tweeted that his favorite type of partnership is a purchase order.
While I love purchase orders, there is a lot of value in more open-ended partnerships, as well. But there’s also less direct responsibility.
A few months ago Intel dealt with this by sending Mobileye a $15 billion PO for the entire company.
I’m interested to see how the latest traids of partners go.
David Silver 