Or alternatively, Pride comes before hundreds of millions of investment leading up to an eventual buy out from one of the many cash rich tech giants who are all

Or alternatively, Pride comes before hundreds of millions of investment leading up to an eventual buy out from one of the many cash rich tech giants who are all afraid of being outmaneuvered by a nimble start up. Zoox doesn't need to change the world, it either needs to stockpile engineering talent that a tech giant thinks is important (See also: Nervana) or stockpile some basic foundational technologies (See also: Otto, Levandowski). Cruise Automation was going to do exactly the same things as Zoox. Cruise sold for around $1Bn to GM. Cruise had 40 employees and had basically sold nothing.