Veoneer’s Arriver Software Unit Is Qualcomm’s Acquisition Target

摘要

In August, Qualcomm topped Magna's 3.8 bil-lionUS dollars offer to purchase Veoneer with a remarkable 4.6 billion US dollars bid. If accepted, Qualcomm's CEO, Cristiano Amon, said the company will explore divesting Veoneer's restraint control systems and active safety electronics businesses, while keeping Veoneer's Arriver software unit. Arriver's two main products are vision perception software and drive policy software, key components of ADAS and autonomous driving systems. Software is becoming an exceedingly precious asset. Carmakers are bringing software development and system integration inhouse. And they are slowly taking steps to combine multiple ECUs into a few, very powerful computing units. And further, OEMs are pushing for hardware and software separation. ECU and chip hardware could become commodi-tized. Tier-1 suppliers and chipmakers are feeling squeezed - unless they can inextricably link their hardware to critical software, the sort of software that Arriver has and is developing.