Xiaomi Corp is planning on buying an autonomous driving technology based startup called Deepmotion. The acquisition deal will amount to 77.4 million US Dollars and arrives as the company gears up to enter the electric vehicle market.
The Chinese tech giant made the announcement for this acquisition after it recorded a better than expected second quarter results. This was especially true in India, where its market recovery enabled it to overtake the Cupertino based giant Apple to become the world’s second largest smartphone maker in terms of shipments. While the company has become a major player in the smartphone market, it aims to further diversify in emerging markets, with EV being one of them.
Lei Jun, Founder and CEO of the company, is currently leading the brand’s electric vehicle project, with Xiaomi previously announcing a sizeable 10 billion US Dollars investment plan over the next decade in the new category. Furthermore, the company is also set to invest heavily into the EV market through its own research and development and manufacturing to produce its first self branded electric car. Now, the acquisition of Deepmotion could help it get further ahead with its goals.
For those unaware, Deepmotion develops driver assistance software and is the latest move from Xiaomi to broaded its presence in the EV industry. Similar to the company, other Chinese tech brands like Huawei and Baidu are also developing their own autonomous driving technology as well. Company’s president Wang Xiang even stated that “Through this acquisition, we hope to shorten the time to market for our product. We want to speed up our autonomous driving R&D.”
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