French Kalray Got $9 Million Investment From NXP Semiconductors

Kalray Corp., in processors for new intelligent systems, announces an investment from NXP Semiconductors NV for €8 million ($9 million), to enable the companies to develop together safe, reliable and scalable solutions for autonomous driving, combining NXP Automotive solutions and Kalray MPPA (Massively Parallel Processor Array) intelligent processors.

The start-up will submit to its next shareholders’ meeting a resolution to appoint Sean Pitonak, SVP, corporate development and M&A, NXP as member of its supervisory board.

Upon settlement-delivery of the new shares, the NXP Group will hold ca. 9.95% of Kalray’s share capital and voting rights.

Strategic nature of transaction
This transaction will strengthen the partnership between the two companies that has been announced one year ago at CES 2019 which is targeting the development and deployment of a L2 (Partial Driving Automation) to L5 (Full Vehicle Automation) common hardware and software platform, for a safe, reliable and scalable autonomous driving solutions.

The funds raised will be used to finance Kalray’s resources and investments required by the implementation of the strategic partnership with NXP, and fund Kalray’s roadmap in support of its automotive and embedded strategy.

The two firms intend to bring an integrated, scalable solution to the automotive market, including CPU processing, neural network computing, functional safety capabilities, and an optimized tool chain – together providing the necessary requirements for next-gen ADAS and automated driving systems. The partners will also respond together to business opportunities and NXP will support Kalray in term of sales, marketing, automotive expertise and global technical support.

The next gen of the NXP BlueBox autonomous driving reference platform with NXP’s S32 family of safe automotive processors and automotive grade Layerscape processors is set to integrate Kalray’s MPPA Intelligent Processors and provide it to automotive customers and NXP BlueBox eco-system.

“Delivering a platform for autonomous driving, integrating the required AI and safe compute performance, requires high levels of collaboration,” said Henri Ardevol, SVP and GM automotive processing, NXP. “Kalray’s scalable, open platform and heritage in the industry is a complement to NXP’s deep experience, dedication to safety and portfolio in the automotive space. We are very happy to combine our expertise with Kalray to help our customers deliver increasingly automated vehicles.“

“We are honored to announce NXP is now one of our strategic investors,” said Éric Baissus, CEO, Kalray. “NXP is one of the most well-established and expert company in the automotive semi-conductor industry. This investment will further strengthen the collaboration of our teams and participate to the funding of our automotive roadmap. Together, I am convinced we have a unique solution to provide to the market for reliable autonomous driving, combining performance, openness and functional safety needs.”

More on transaction
 
About NXP Semiconductors
It enables secure connections for a smarter world, solutions that make lives easier, better, and safer. Leader in secure connectivity solutions for embedded applications, it is driving innovation in the automotive, industrial and IoT, mobile, and communication infrastructure markets. Built on more than 60 years of combined experience and expertise, it has approximately 30,000 employees in more than 30 countries and posted revenue of $8.88 billion in 2019.

Read also:
63% Revenue Growth in 2019 for Kalray
€100 million revenue target by 2022
January 23, 2020 | Press Release
FMS: Kalray Supporting NVMe/TCP to Ease and Accelerate Data Center Storage Disaggregation
MPPA processor and optimized fast-path software to develop NVMe/TCP profile for target controller solution
August 5, 2019 | Press Release
French Kalray Demonstrated NVMe Direct SSD Controller
Equipped with company Bostan high-speed I/O processor
July 26, 2016 | Press Release