Samsung is the newest player in the self-driving car business

Samsung is setting up another $300m fund in order to further its efforts into the self-driving car domain.

The South Korean giant is gearing to up its presence in the self-driving car domain. The news which just came out shows that Samsung is committing a $300m fund towards funding the startups, that aim at developing the necessary tech to power an autonomous car. The funds would be employed in developing cutting edge tech, both hardware and software.

The funds would be used in developing hardware technologies and products like smart sensors, high performance computers, and technology related systems like those to be employed for connectivity and safety. Samsung also intends to put the funds towards making the necessary machine learning and computer vision software, which will accompany these hardware.

The project was announced by Samsung today, at an automobile event in Germany. The funds will not directly be used in the development of these products, instead the company will fund into different startups which, in turn, will come up with products. The fund would be headed by a senior Samsung official, John Absmeier who previously acted as VP Smart Machines at the Samsung Strategy & Innovation Center. He also bears experience of working in automotive industry, and in fact worked as a former Director at a US-based self-driving car company, Delphi Automotive.

South Korea, recently, acquired Harman with a $8b of investment. The company which specializes in making auto parts is supposed to lead the company’s efforts in the domain of self-driving cars. The most recent investment of $300m will set up another subsidiary funding company within Harman for developing the technologies to be used in development of self-driving cars. The company will also be developing a driver-assistance platform which would be kept open-source.

Samsung already has made the fund’s first investment (worth $89 million) in TTTech, a company that specializes in developing networking and safety control systems for automobiles. Samsung has also previously funded in such startups, under different initiatives. It was also awarded permission to test self-driving cars in California.

News — Via Reuters, Image — CNN