Yamaha Motor Invests Further in Autonomous Driving Technology Developer TIER IV ― Further Driving the Automated Transport Solutions Business ―
July 19, 2022
IWATA, July 19, 2022 - Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd. (Tokyo: 7272) is proud to announce that it has made an additional investment in TIER IV Inc., with the aim of establishing autonomous driving technology as well as promoting its commercialization, including its automated transport solutions business for factory grounds.
This is Yamaha Motor's third investment in the company following those made in August 2017 and July 2019.
TIER IV is leading the development of Autoware*, the world's first open-source autonomous driving OS, and is committed to "democratizing" autonomous driving so that anyone can contribute to the advancement of the technology. TIER IV is focusing on the development of the core software for autonomous driving systems in order to expedite the broad adoption of autonomous driving throughout society via an open-source platform.
This additional investment is for Series B round financing through third-party allotment by TIER IV, and investors besides Yamaha Motor include Sompo Holdings, Inc. and Bridgestone Corporation. This brings TIER IV's Series B total funding to 12.1 billion yen. In addition, TIER IV was selected as the R&D project Level 4 autonomous driving software of the Green Innovation Fund administrated by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO).
Yamaha Motor designated several "New Businesses" and "Growth Businesses" as "Strategic Business Fields" in its new Medium-Term Management Plan (2022-2024) announced in February of this year. As part of managing its business portfolio, the Company will actively allocate management resources to these businesses in order to develop them into future core businesses. As one of its New Businesses, the Company established "eve autonomy, Inc." with TIER IV as a joint venture company in February 2020 in order to commercialize and make an automated transport solutions business a reality. Through this and other initiatives, Yamaha Motor aims to provide various solutions by further establishing the technology for low-speed automated driving under specific conditions.
* "Autoware" is a trademark of The Autoware Foundation.
TIER IV company overview
| Company Name | : TIER IV Inc. |
| Established | : December 1, 2015 |
| Representative | : Kazuya Takeda |
| Headquarters | : Nagoya City, Aichi Prefecture |
| Business Activities | : Development of autonomous driving platforms, development of autonomous driving web services, sale of autonomous driving system development kits, training regarding autonomous driving technology |
| Website | : https://tier4.jp/en/ |
