IWATA, July, 2022 – Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd. (Tokyo: 7272) is proud to announce that it has made an
additional investment in TIER IV Inc., with the aim of establishing autonomous driving technology as
well as promoting its commercialization, including its automated transport solutions business for
factory grounds.
This is Yamaha Motor’s third investment in the company following those made in August 2017 and
July 2019.
TIER IV is leading the development of Autoware*, the world’s first open-source autonomous driving
OS, and is committed to “democratizing” autonomous driving so that anyone can contribute to
the advancement of the technology. TIER IV is focusing on the development of the core software
for autonomous driving systems in order to expedite the broad adoption of autonomous driving
throughout society via an open-source platform.
This additional investment is for Series B round financing through third-party allotment by TIER IV, and
investors besides Yamaha Motor include Sompo Holdings, Inc. and Bridgestone Corporation. This
brings TIER IV’s Series B total funding to 12.1 billion yen. In addition, TIER IV was selected as the
R&D project Level 4 autonomous driving software of the Green Innovation Fund administrated by
the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO).
Yamaha Motor designated several “New Businesses” and “Growth Businesses” as “Strategic
Business Fields” in its new Medium-Term Management Plan (2022–2024) announced in
February of this year. As part of managing its business portfolio, the Company will
actively allocate management resources to these businesses in order to develop them
into future core businesses. As one of its New Businesses, the Company established
“eve autonomy, Inc.” with TIER IV as a joint venture company in February 2020 in
order to commercialize and make an automated transport solutions business a reality.
Through this and other initiatives, Yamaha Motor aims to provide various solutions by
further establishing the technology for low-speed automated driving under specific
conditions.
