Toyota has announced in a press release today (17 December) that it plans to buy a 3% stake in Preferred Networks, a Tokyo-based artificial intelligence venture, for JPY1 billion (USD8.2 million). The acquisition is expected to be finalised by 30 December. Commenting on the development, Kenichi Murata, head of Toyota's connected car research, said, "This will strengthen our partnership as our collaboration has begun to show various results." Toyota and Preferred Networks have been jointly developing self-driving cars since October 2014. One of the key focus areas of Preferred Networks consists of machine learning technology, including "deep-learning", a branch of artificial intelligence that enables machines to learn on their own with little human supervision.
Significance: The move will help Toyota to accelerate its research and development (R&D) of self-driving technology, and is the latest in a series of efforts by the automaker in this direction. Last month, Toyota announced that it would invest USD1 billion to create an artificial intelligence R&D company, to be called Toyota Research Institute (TRI) and headquartered in Palo Alto, California. Furthermore, Toyota invested another USD50 million in an R&D project in September. With its current pace of investment and research, Toyota will be particularly well positioned in the field of self-driving technology.
