Ford is doubling down on automated driving research, hiring 550 former Argo AI staff to form a new company.

Argo AI was an automated driving startup that shut down after Ford and Volkswagen stopped backing it. While Ford may have pulled its investments in Argo, it appears the company recognized Argo’s engineering talent, hiring 550 of its former employees for its new Latitude AI subsidiary. In fact, according to a company statement, it appears Latitude’s entire workforce is made up of former Argo employees:

Establishing Latitude supports Ford’s strategic shift last year to focus on automated driving technologies for personally owned vehicles. Ford hired about 550 employees formerly of Argo AI across machine learning and robotics, cloud platforms, mapping, sensors and compute systems, test operations, systems and safety engineering. The Latitude team has applied much of their experience in automated driving, including software development tools and infrastructure, in the pivot to work on advanced driver assist systems (ADAS).

Ford hopes to build on the success of its BlueCruise technology, which recently took Consumer Reports’ top spot among automated driving systems.

“We see automated driving technology as an opportunity to redefine the relationship between people and their vehicles,” said Doug Field, chief advanced product development and technology officer, Ford Motor Company. “Customers using BlueCruise are already experiencing the benefits of hands-off driving. The deep experience and talent in our Latitude team will help us accelerate the development of all-new automated driving technology – with the goal of not only making travel safer, less stressful and more enjoyable, but ultimately over time giving our customers some of their day back.”

We believe automated driving technology will help improve safety while unlocking all-new customer experiences that reduce stress and in the future will help free up a driver’s time to focus on what they choose,” said Sammy Omari, executive director, ADAS Technologies at Ford and Latitude CEO. “The expertise of the Latitude team will further complement and enhance Ford’s in-house global ADAS team in developing future driver assist technologies, ultimately delivering on the many benefits of automation.”