Samsung jumps into autonomous driving market
Samsung is investing $300 million into an Automotive Innovation Fund that will invest in automotive start-ups and technology, while its new automotive strategic business unit will focus on autonomous and advanced driver assistance services (ADAS). This follows the company’s acquisition of automotive audio and auto parts supplier Harman International Industries, with its stated goal of accelerating growth in automotive and connected technologies.
“It’s time to communicate our intent to enter the autonomous driving market,” said Young Sohn, the company’s president and chief strategy officer, in a statement to Reuters. “Samsung has been incubating this business for quite a while.”
According to the company, its background in consumer electronics along with a now intimate connection with the automotive industry via its Harman subsidiary will enable it to compete in that increasingly crowded market. Reuters notes that two of Samsung’s biggest competitors, Intel and Qualcomm, have also recently moved into the connected car market – the former with its acquisition of Mobileye and the latter with its pending acquisition of NXP Semiconductors, a large player in the automotive chip market.
Harman derives 65 percent of its sales from its automotive business. It provides navigation services, on-board entertainment systems, and vehicle networks.
According to Samsung, the new autonomous/ADAS business unit will be staffed by hundreds of engineers that are already working on autonomous driving technologies. It will focus on developing core technologies, while its Harman subsidiary will market and integrate these for automakers.
Meanwhile, the company says, its new Samsung Automotive Innovation Fund will invest in connected car technology areas including sensors, machine vision, artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, cloud services, mobile connectivity, automotive-grade safety, and security. The fund’s first investment will be $89 million in TTTech Computertechnik AG (Vienna, Austria) – known for developing highly reliable network computing systems used in the Boeing Dreamliner, Audi cars, and NASA spacecraft.
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