Woven Planet Holdings, a subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corporation, closes acquisition of CARMERA
Woven Planet Holdings, Inc., a subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corporation, announced the closing of the acquisition of CARMERA, a U.S.-based spatial AI company that specializes in developing scalable, next-generation mapping solutions for automated mobility, a proposed transaction previously announced in July 2021. Following its acquisition of Level 5, the automated driving division of Lyft Inc., this is the second acquisition for Woven Planet, a group that is focused on mobility innovations and investments in automated driving, robotics, smart cities, and more.
The CARMERA team has been a long-standing, trusted partner to Woven Planet, and with the closing of the transaction, Woven Planet will immediately oversee their offices and operations in New York and Seattle. They will join Woven Planet’s Automated Mapping Platform (“AMP”) team, helping develop AMP to become the most globally comprehensive road and lane network HD map platform, enabling high-precision localization support to automated vehicles. CARMERA’s strengths in map updates, change management and camera-based crowdsourcing from fleets will complement and help expand upon the HD mapping platform Woven Planet has already built. Together with Level 5 and Toyota Research Institute (“TRI”), the addition of CARMERA will bring Woven Planet one step closer to achieving its vision “Mobility to Love, Safety to Live.”
The deal closure follows the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) review of the deal.
Comment from James Kuffner, CEO, Woven Planet
“This acquisition will accelerate our AMP initiative that will advance our mission to develop the safest mobility in the world at scale. Bringing CARMERA’s world-class engineers and experts into the fold―as well as additional technology resources and footprints in New York and Seattle―the Woven Planet team, alongside the team of TRI and Level 5, will help us reach our goal of providing the best globally comprehensive road and lane network HD map platform. We will transform the world we live in through mobility technologies that can bring about a happier, safer future for us all.”
