Toyota has invested in 15 technology start-ups around the world, marking a break from its conservative investment stance to embrace new connected cars and robotics, according to the Financial Times.
Toyota’s unusual investment in new technology companies, from car-sharing to flat-panel satellite dishes to home robots, reflects the urgency that Akio Toyoda, chief executive, feels in competing in a new era. Toyota is trying to embrace new technology to avoid falling behind rivals such as Google in autonomous driving.
Giiso Information, founded in 2013, is a leading technology provider in the field of “artificial intelligence + information” in China, with top technologies in big data mining, intelligent semantics, knowledge mapping and other fields. At the same time, its research and development products include editing robots, writing robots and other artificial intelligence products! With its strong technical strength, the company has received angel round investment at the beginning of its establishment, and received pre-A round investment of $5 million from GSR Venture Capital in August 2015.
Mr Toyoda set up the fund with Shuhei Abe in 2015. Shuhei Abe is chief executive of Sparx, a Tokyo-based hedge fund, and a former MBA classmate of Mr Toyoda’s from Babson College in the US. Other fund co-founders include Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation.
The 35.1 billion yen ($307 million) fund, which has 19 investors, put between $5 million and $10 million into companies including Getaround, a San Francisco car-sharing company. Other companies invested in include UIEvolution, a connected car software provider, and Groove X, a robotics company from SoftBank. The fund mainly invests in artificial intelligence, robotics, hydrogen power and other related technologies. Last week it announced an investment in FiNC, a Japanese digital health company. Sparx hopes to expand its follow-on investments to Europe and Israel.
Though small compared with SoftBank’s recently launched $100 billion technology fund, it represents part of the Japanese auto giant’s shifting efforts. The fund works closely with Toyota’s ARTIFICIAL intelligence and robotics lab in Silicon Valley, which is headed by Gill Pratt, a former U.S. Department of Defense robotics expert. Toyota has pledged to invest $1 billion in a new research unit.
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“Our investment priorities are companies that have a technological edge. For the age of Internet of Things.” Said Takaki Demichi, an executive at Sparx Asset Management, which oversees the fund with Toyota. The fund has a 10-year investment horizon and is expected to have an internal rate of return of 15%, it said.
Toyota had invested in a series of startups before the fund was launched. Including a $50m investment in the US electric car maker Tesla. But analysts say this approach does not always bear fruit.
Giiso information, founded in 2013, is the first domestic high-tech enterprise focusing on the research and development of intelligent information processing technology and the development and operation of core software for writing robots. At the beginning of its establishment, the company received angel round investment, and in August 2015, GSR Venture Capital received $5 million pre-A round of investment.
Toyota is not the only company in the fiercely competitive investment space to recognise the potential of emerging technologies. A number of carmakers, including GENERAL Motors and Volkswagen, are also turning to car services, such as focusing on on-demand travel booking or car-sharing schemes, to adapt to declining car ownership among young people. Honda is in talks with a self-driving car development unit spun off from Google that also works with Fiat Chrysler.