Asian Tech Press (Aug 26) --Chinese electronics giant Xiaomi Corp (1810.HK) disclosed on Wednesday that it has spent $77.37 million to acquire self-driving technology company Deepmotion Tech Limited to accelerate its electric vehicle business.
Xiaomi announced on Wednesday its 2021 interim results ended June 30, 2021. The earnings report showed that Xiaomi's total revenue and net profit both showed growth in the second quarter. Total revenue for Q2 reached 87.79 billion yuan ($13.60 billion), up 64% year-on-year, and net profit for Q2 was 8.27 billion yuan ($1.28 billion), up 83.9% year-on-year. Both hit a single-quarter record high.
The earnings report also showed that Xiaomi acquired Beijing-based Deepmotion Tech, an autonomous driving startup, for a total transaction amount of approximately $77.37 million, of which $24.4 million will be repaid in cash and the rest will be paid by issuing consideration shares.
According to the announcement, Xiaomi acquired 28.84% of the preferred shares of Deepmotion Tech for $14.9 million in cash and 71.16% of the common shares of Deepmotion Tech for $62.47 million in cash and shares.
Upon completion of the transaction, Deepmotion Tech will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Xiaomi, and may integrate a team of up to 20 persons into Xiaomi, helping Xiaomi to initially complete the lineup of people in charge of various modules of autonomous driving technology.
In this regard, Xiaomi said that Deepmotion Tech has strong technology reserves and R&D capabilities, providing a full set of solutions including perception, positioning, planning and control for advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving applications, which can enhance the company's core technology capabilities in the intelligent electric vehicle business.
Founded in July 2017, Deepmotion Tech is an autonomous driving solution provider. Its four co-founders, including CEO Rui Cai, CTO Zhiwei Li, Chief Scientist Kuiyuan Yang, and R&D Director Chi Zhang, all have a multi-year background in Microsoft Research Asia, giving Deepmotion Tech a technical gene in computer vision and deep learning.
(US$1 = 6.4566 yuan)
