Why Toyota’s VC fund is investing in AI startups

TOKYO — Toyota Motor Corp.’s first enterprise cash fund is investing in startups that aid the Japanese automaker refine every day procedures by bringing sharper source-chain management and robotics to the factory floor, a fund government stated.

The Silicon Valley-based Toyota AI Ventures fund, with $two hundred million less than management, has so considerably invested in 36 early-stage startups, such as self-driving car software business Nauto, factory video clip analytics organization Drishti and air mobility business Joby Aviation.

Toyota, the world’s premier automaker by vehicle sales, and quite a few car organizations these types of as Volkswagen Team are funnelling revenue into startups to aid gain an edge in synthetic intelligence as investor desire shifts to self-driving automobiles.

For occasion Toyota, which has dozens of factories all-around the globe, desires to be capable to speedily share the lessons acquired at 1 plant throughout other plants so that efficiencies are maximized, Jim Adler, the founding running director of the fund, instructed Reuters in an interview.

“If you appear at cloud computing, for instance, and cloud robotics, and fleet learning, when 1 robotic learns one thing, the rest of the robots mechanically find out that point,” he stated.