(Bloomberg) -- Ford Motor Co. is among five investorsproviding $6.6 million in seed funding for Civil Maps, aCalifornia startup that creates three-dimensional maps forautonomous cars.

The other participants are Motus Ventures, Wicklow Capital,StartX Stanford and AME Cloud Ventures, a fund led by Yahoo! Inc.co-founder Jerry Yang, Civil Maps said in a statement.

The company, which has 16 full-time employees, is based inAlbany, California, and grew out of an accelerator programsponsored by Stanford University.

The startup uses artificial-intelligence software to aggregateraw 3-D data from sensors on self-driving cars to create highlydetailed maps used to direct autonomous vehicles. Civil Maps saidits format uses less data, reducing the cost of transmission overcellular networks. That lets the technology provide more real-timeroad data gathered through crowd-sourcing traffic information fromother cars.

“Autonomous vehicles require a totally new kind of map,” SravanPuttagunta, chief executive officer of Civil Maps, said in thestatement.

‘Step closer’

Ford declined to say how much it contributed to the seedfunding.

“Investing in and working with Civil Maps gives us an additionalway to develop 3-D high-resolution maps, which will bring fullyautonomous Ford vehicles a step closer for consumers,” Alan Hall, aspokesman for the automaker, said in an e-mailed statement.

Ford has been making modest bets on technology partners as itresearches self-driving cars and the sharing economy. In May, theDearborn, Michigan-based automaker invested $182.2 million to takea stake of about 6.6% in Pivotal Software Inc., a cloud-computingcompany that helped it develop a mobility app.

Other automakers are also making similar moves. General MotorsCo. spent nearly $1 billion acquiring self-driving software makerCruise Automation and invested $500 million fora 9% stake in ride-hailing company Lyft Inc. Fiat ChryslerAutomobiles NV has teamed with Alphabet Inc.’s Google to develop100 self-driving minivans.

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