Ride hailing and food delivery app giant Uber has called time on its expensive pursuit of driverless technology with the news it has agreed the $4 billion sale of the business to a smaller rival. For some investors, Uber’s true potential was seen as being realisable when it owns fleets of driverless vehicles, offering an affordable taxi service that could one day replace privately owned cars.

That might still one day become a reality, Uber’s autonomous fleet won’t be powered by its own proprietary driverless technology. Under pressure from investors to find a clear route towards profitability in the near-term future, Uber is to sell its driverless technology business, Uber Advanced Technologies Group, to Silicon Valley start-up Aurora Innovation.

The deal does, however, leave Uber with an upside if Aurora manages to take the technology forward in coming years. The terms of the deal will see Uber also invest $400 million in the start-up and acquire a 26% stake. But the expense of continuing to develop the technology, which Uber has invested billions of dollars in, will no longer be on its balance sheet. And it will be free to focus on achieving profitability in its core businesses of Uber rides and Uber Eats, the takeaway delivery service.

The deal values the Advanced Technologies Group at $4 billion, which represents a massive drop on the $7.25 billion valuation at which Uber last year secured $1 billion of new funding from investors.

Uber has been pursuing autonomous vehicles technology since 2016. But with the company under pressure to achieve profitability, and the expense of the project meaning the unit was one of Uber’s most significant cash burners, the tech company has decided to cut its losses.

There has also been the suspicion Uber has been falling behind in the race to achieve a working driverless technology stack, with Google’s Waymo out in front, Tesla seemingly making progress and traditional automakers like GM also contenders. U

ber’s testing program also suffered a serious setback when one of its vehicles was involved in a fatal accident involving a pedestrian in Arizona. Uber’s driverless vehicle was cleared of responsibility for the tragic accident. The pedestrian was crossing the road in the dark, not at a designated pedestrian crossing point and a human driver would almost certainly have also failed to react in time. But the company lost several months while its test drive program was put on hold while the incident was investigated.

However, with a significant stake now in Aurora, only founded in 2017 by Chris Urmson, formerly lead engineer at Waymo, Uber will still hope to benefit if the start-up can take its technology forward. The deal with Uber values Aurora at $10 billion.

A driverless truck, with Uber Freight a unit considered to represent significant business potential, will be Aurora’s first priority.