VW’s Software Unit CARIAD Acquires Automotive Division of Intenta GmbH

VW Group’s software unit CARIAD has acquired the automotive division of Intenta GmbH, where more than 100 experts work in the field of sensor data fusion. With this acquisition, CARIAD says it’s increasing its accelerating the development of assisted and automated driving functions.

CARIAD is developing these up to Level 4 for all of the VW Group’s car brands. 

Completion of the acquisition is expected towards the end of 2022 and is still subject to approval by the antitrust authorities.

Sensor data fusion is a prerequisite for the high safety requirements of assisted and automated driving, where drivers can take their hands off the steering wheel and use the time for other activities.

In addition, Intenta’s automotive developers have expertise in the development of swarm services and display functions.

CARIAD already made an acquisition in the development field of automated driving last year and took over the camera software division of Hella Aglaia.

Lynn Longo, Chief Technical Officer at CARIAD, says: “Our goal is to develop key software components ourselves and increase the depth of value added in key development areas. That’s why we are expanding our expertise along the entire tech stack for automated driving. One building block here is sensor data fusion. With the acquisition of Intenta’s automotive unit as a proven specialist in this field, we are expanding our competencies.”

Established in 2020 under the name Car.Software Organisation, around 4,500 engineers and developers around the world are now working at CARIAD to build a uniform software platform for all brands of Volkswagen Group, which includes a unified and scalable architecture, an operating system and automotive cloud.

The new software platform will first be deployed at the end of 2025.