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indie Semiconductor, an automotive solutions innovator, announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire emotion3D GmbH, a Vienna, Austria-based specialist developer of advanced perception algorithms and software for in-cabin sensing, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and automated driving. According to McKinsey, automotive software will represent a $83 billion total market value in 2030 (automotive semiconductors will be $135 billion), with a 2019-2023 CAGR of greater than 9%. ADAS and automated driving software will comprise over 50 percent of this total, marking a significant incremental revenue opportunity for automotive semiconductors.
As global automotive regulation and new car assessment programs evolve to make driving and roads for all users safer, automakers are increasingly deploying multi-modal sensing, including cameras and radars, to address these growing safety requirements. The data generated by these sensors must be processed by software perception algorithms to interpret a vehicle’s external and internal environmental context and classify and identify potential hazards for downstream safety actions such as driver and occupant warnings or automated braking.
emotion3D has developed an AI-based perception solution for embedded automotive vision and radar sensing, with proven deployments for in-cabin sensing applications such as driver and occupant monitoring (DMS/OMS) with top global Tier 1 system integrators and OEMs. Additionally, emotion3D’s advanced perception solutions for external sensing applications such as nighttime forward vision and camera-radar sensor fusion are already in advanced development and customer testing. A key differentiator of emotion3D’s machine learning-based approach is its robustness to varying customer use cases, achieved through a low compute multi-task neural network architecture in combination with extensive use of synthetic data and simulation during model development and testing. The company’s strong in-house capabilities in synthetic data generation significantly reduce the need for real-world data, enabling faster and more cost-efficient development, reliable retraining of neural networks, and high flexibility in addressing custom requirements.
“Automakers are increasingly demanding co-optimized hardware-software solutions for ADAS applications,” said Mark Tyndall, EVP of Corporate Development and IR at indie. “Already engaged with top global Tier 1 manufacturers and OEMs, emotion3D is supplying an innovative AI-based perception approach that is ideally suited to embedded ADAS sensing, extensible to vision, radar and sensor fusion applications. Supplying software alongside our chip offering will bring significant value-add to indie’s vision and radar portfolio and high gross margin revenue, positioning indie to maximally benefit from the substantial ADAS market opportunity.”
“We are incredibly excited to join forces with indie,” said Dr. Florian Seitner, CEO and co-founder of emotion3D. “Our software technology is uniquely suited to indie’s embedded vision and radar hardware solutions, and access to in-house silicon will help accelerate our ambitious multi-sensor roadmap. Our company’s founding was based upon the global safety initiative Vision Zero, which aims to eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries. The combination of our software and indie’s hardware solutions will help us to take a step closer to this important long-term industry aspiration.”
indie will pay $20 million in cash at closing, in addition to an aggregate of up to $10 million performance based earnouts that will be payable if certain revenue targets are exceeded over a post-closing period ending in February 2027. The closing is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory clearance. It is expected to occur in the fourth quarter of 2025, and be immediately accretive.
