In late February, word emerged that autonomous taxi startup Drive.ai Inc. was looking for a buyer. Now, it may have finally found one.

The Information on Wednesday evening cited two sources as saying that Apple Inc. is in the process of acquiring Drive.ai. The transaction, which is apparently not yet a done deal, is described as an acquihire and could see “dozens” of Drive.ai engineers join the iPhone maker should it go through. It’s not clear what would happen with the other employees of the startup, which had a headcount of over 150 as of last October.

Mountain View, California-based Drive.ai was founded in 2015 by a group of engineers from Stanford University’s storied Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. The startup went on to raise $77 million in funding from investors including New Enterprise Associates and Nvidia Corp.’s venture capital arm.

Drive.ai used the capital to develop a self-driving shuttle based on the Nissan NV200 van. The startup operates than half a dozen vehicles in Arlington, Texas as part of a pilot taxi service that is open to members of the public. It’s one of only a handful of autonomous ride-hailing operations in the world, with the others being operated by much larger players such as Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo LLC division.

Drive.ai’s vans stand out in other ways, too. They’re painted a bright orange to maximize visibility and feature four 22.5-inch displays on the exterior that provide navigation cues to passerbys. If a vehicle stops at a crosswalk for a pedestrian, the front panel will read “Waiting for You” while the back screen will show the message “Pedestrian Crossing.”

If Apple’s acquisition of Drive.ai goes through, the company will likely integrate the startup into its secretive Project Titan autonomous driving group.

The iPhone maker’s reported interest in Drive.ai would suggest that it’s still actively looking to grow Project Titan despite laying off 200 employees earlier this year as part of a restructuring. Apple had originally sought to build its own car model from scratch, but in 2016 narrowed the focus of Project Titan to developing autonomous driving software.

Photo: Drive.ai