Intel Capital, the investment arm of chip maker Intel Corp., plans to invest more than $250 million into autonomous vehicles within the next two years.

Intel Chief Executive Brian Krzanich made the announcement Tuesday at the LA Auto Show’s AutoMobility conference, where he suggested that “data” could have almost as big an impact on road transportation as “oil” itself.

“You could say oil is the key technology that allowed the automotive world we know today,” Krzanich said. “When it comes to the car of the future and automated driving experiences, however, data is literally the new oil. Data has the potential to radically change the way we think about the driving experience.”

Krzanich talked about the various ways in which autonomous vehicles can collect data – from cameras, GPS, LIDAR, radar and sonar – and said that each autonomous vehicle of the future will generate around 4,000 GB of data each day.

That’s a huge amount of data, and in an age where companies of all shapes and sizes prize the value hidden within said data, the automotive industry is going to need to be ready to handle it, Krzanich said. In addition, it will also need to know how to process that data and ensure it’s secure. That’s why Intel promised to “lead the next generation of computing transformations” and come up with “end-to-end solutions” aimed at making that transformation happen.

Intel’s appearance at the conference was the first time the company has keynoted this kind of event. But the company’s interest in autonomous vehicles was confirmed earlier this summer when it announced it was collaborating with BMW and Mobileye Technologies Ltd. to build self-driving cars by 2021.