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The Chinese company Xiaomi Corp. will buy autonomous driving technology startup Deepmotion for around $ 77.4 million, in a deal that will help it advance its ambitions to enter the growing field.
The company revealed the acquisition after reporting better-than-expected results for the second quarter, when recovery in key markets such as India helped it overtake Apple to become the world’s second-largest smartphone maker in terms of deliveries.
Xiaomi’s revenue rose 64% to 87.79 billion yuan ($ 13.6 billion) in the quarter ending June, beating the average estimate of 85.01 billion yuan.
Co-founder and CEO Lei Jun is now leading a campaign to take Xiaomi forward beyond smartphones, as the 51-year-old personally runs an electric car manufacturing company, in which the company has pledged an initial investment of $ 10 billion over the next decade. .
Lei Jun said the company has enough cash on hand to fund the project, which will require years of significant investment in development and manufacturing before the first car is sold.
The acquisition of the four-year-old Deepmotion company, which develops driver assistance software, is the latest in a series of steps Xiaomi has taken to deepen a crowded field of competitors. A number of tech giants, from Huawei Technologies Co. to Baidu Inc., have already spent years developing autonomous components and technologies.
The deal aims to help Xiaomi develop Level 4 autonomous driving technology, which enables fully autonomous driving.
After first establishing itself as a maker of low-cost phones sold through e-commerce channels in China, Xiaomi is trying to fix its image with sleek designs and more advanced tools. The 11-year-old company this month unveiled a phone with the latest Qualcomm Inc processors and a front-facing camera hidden below the screen, designed to compete with Apple’s iPhones in the luxury market.
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