Ford Motor Co is investing US$182.2 million in San Francisco-based Pivotal Software Inc, underscoring the pressure automakers face to boost their technology platforms given the rise of connected and self-driving cars.
The investment in Pivotal, a cloud-software company which provides tools that make it easier for developers to build software, would help Ford boost its own software capabilities. As part of the deal, Ford and Pivotal are to jointly open labs in the US and Europe where their engineers are to work side by side.
While Pivotal does not make the software at the heart of self-driving car technology, Ford chief executive Mark Fields said he expected benefits from the partnership to flow to all product-development and information-technology teams at Ford, including those working on autonomous cars.
For example, Pivotal can help Ford speed up its software-development times, he said in an interview.
Ford’s investment, part of a US$253 million funding round into Pivotal, comes a day after Alphabet Inc’s Google and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV said they would collaborate on creating autonomous minivans.
“This is not about catching up or one upping the competition,” Fields said. “We have had leadership in [autonomous vehicles] for some time now.”
Ford is on track for a fleet of 30 autonomous cars by year end, a Ford spokesman said, second only to Google’s test fleet of autonomous cars.
Software maker Microsoft Corp is also investing in the funding round for Pivotal, which had been considered an initial public offering candidate when this year’s market for initial public offerings looked more promising.
Pivotal’s tools are popular with software developers who use the Oracle-owned Java platform, so a tighter relationship with Pivotal could give Microsoft’s Azure cloud developer-tools service an advantage among that group, often software developers at big businesses.
Existing Pivotal investors General Electric Co, EMC Corp and VMWare Inc are participating in the funding round, which gives Pivotal a valuation of US$2.8 billion after the new cash infusion, a person familiar with the funding round said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
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