According to Pulse by Maeil Business News Korea,

South Korea’s global automaker Hyundai Motor Group has invested more than 1 trillion won ($783.1 million) in domestic and overseas startups for open innovation in areas such as mobility and artificial intelligence (AI) in the past six years.

Hyundai Motor Group held the “HMG Open Innovation Tech Day” in Seoul on Thursday and announced its win-win strategies and accomplishments with the startup ecosystem, as well as its startup collaboration system.

Hyundai Motor Co. and Kia Corp. said they have invested a total of 1.33 trillion won in more than 200 startups between 2017 and the end of March this year. The figure excludes large-scale overseas investments such as those of robotics affiliate Boston Dynamics Inc., joint venture for autonomous driving Motional AD LLC and urban air mobility (UAM) subsidiary Supernal.

Hyundai Motor Group’s investments in startups span a wide range of new industries, from mobility services to robotics. The company invested 753.7 billion won in mobility, 281.8 billion won in electrification, 126.2 billion won in connectivity, 60 billion won in artificial intelligence and 54 billion won in autonomous driving. It plans to nurture startups for open innovation even in resource circulation, low carbon, semiconductors, and quantum technology in addition to software-defined vehicles (SDVs),

“Our goal is to create a win-win system by actively investing in and fostering startups that create new customer value and give us important insights in the course of cooperation,” said Hwang Yun-seong, vice president and head of open innovation investment group at Hyundai Motor Group.

Hyundai Motor Group operates innovation hub CRADLE in five countries - U.S., Germany, Israel, China and Singapore - to identify promising startups. In Korea, it launched ZER01NE Accelerator program, an open innovation platform to facilitate collaboration between startups and various teams under the group, in 2018. Additionally, a total of 30 startups have spun off through the in-house startup program, raising cumulative sales of 280 billion won and hiring 800 new employees.

The automaker collaborates with startups to develop its flagship businesses. MakinaRocks Co. supports smart factory systems at major Hyundai Motor and Kia factories with AI technology based on machine learning and deep learning. MakinaRocks is an AI solution company for manufacturing that has grown through the ZER01NE funds in 2018.

Other major startups in collaboration include IONITY GmbH, a European electric vehicle fast charging infrastructure company, and IonQ Inc., an American quantum computing company engaged in joint research of autonomous driving and sophisticated battery technology with Hyundai Motor Group.

The HMG Open Innovation Tech Day showcased core technologies of five companies, namely MOBIN Inc., Mobiletech Co., ViewMagine, Aplayz Inc. and Metaverse Entertainment Inc. Mobiletech demonstrated a three-dimensional display of Seoul’s Gangnam area using its realistic digital twin technology, which implements a digital representation of the physical world that looks exactly like the counterpart in the real world.

“Attracting funding was a challenge at the beginning of our business. We were able to achieve a breakthrough for growth thanks to Hyundai Motor Group’s investment in our technology,” said Kim Jae-seung, chief executive officer of Mobiletech.

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Source: Pulse by Maeil Business News Korea (Jun 16, 2023)