Mega concern buys AI company
Stellantis has acquired aiMotive, a software company developing autonomous driving technology. That is quite striking, because some other major car brands recently reversed their investments in this technology. There would be too little future in it. Stellantis seems to think otherwise.
While Volkswagen and Ford recently pulled out of Argo AI, a developer of artificial intelligencesoftware, Stellantis buys just such a software company. aiMotive, a start-up from Hungary, is mainly engaged in the development of autonomous driving systems. It will continue as it did before, as it will become a subsidiary and not an integral part of Stellantis. The term ‘start-up’ used by them suggests that it is a small, new company, but that is not too bad. aiMotive has and continues to have over 200 employees across offices in Hungary, Germany, the US and Japan. The current CEO will also remain in his place after the takeover.
aiMotive makes four products, three of which it continues to sell to third parties. The company is now developing the aiDrive technology, which includes software for autonomous driving, for Stellantis. It is likely that BMW will also benefit from this. Last year, Stellantis and BMW announced that they wanted to work together on autonomous driving. At that time, Stellantis also mentioned the development of its STLA AutoDrive technology, which it is now talking about again. aiMotive should accelerate its development.
In 2024, the first Stellantis products should be equipped with AutoDrive, which would initially enable level 3 autonomous driving. Whether the group also took over aiMotive for further development towards levels 4 and 5 is not clear. In any case, Ford and Volkswagen do not believe that much, as evidenced by their decision to withdraw a significant part of their investments in technology.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl