General Motors (Detroit, MI; NYSE:GM) announced that it has acquired Strobe (Pasadena, CA), which makes coherent lider for autonomous vehicles, and will fold it into Cruise Automation, a GM subsidiary dedicated to self-driving vehicles. Financial terms of the deal were not revealed.

“Strobe’s lidar technology will significantly improve the cost and capabilities of our vehicles so that we can more quickly accomplish our mission to deploy driverless vehicles at scale,” said Kyle Vogt, Founder and CEO, Cruise Automation. Julie Schoenfeld, Founder and CEO of Strobe, said, “Strobe’s deep engineering talent and technology backed by numerous patents will play a significant role in helping GM and Cruise bring these vehicles to market sooner than many think.”

Created in 2014, Strobe was spun off from OEwaves (Pasadena, CA), which makes miniature battery-powered atomic clocks and recently worked with UCLA to develop an optical micro-oscillator that could lead in next generation timing, navigation, and sensing applications. In addition to Strobe founder Schoenfeld, Lute Maleki is director and founder--both also founded OEwaves. Other Strobe board members are Tony Tether, who created the self-driving car project at DARPA; Thomas Casey, an expert in sales and M&A; and John Bowers of UC Santa Barbara, who is an expert on silicon photonics integration.

In September, GM said that Cruise Automation has the world’s first mass-producible car designed with the redundancy and safety requirements necessary to operate without a driver. The vehicle will join Cruise’s testing fleets in San Francisco, metropolitan Phoenix, and Detroit.