News Centre

Intron Technology Invests in China-based NOVAUTO, A Smart Driving AI Computing Startup Creates Technological Synergies and Drives Long-term Business Growth

2020.08.17

(17 August 2020, Hong Kong) – Intron Technology Holdings Limited (“Intron Technology” or the “Group”; HKEX: 1760), a fast-growing automotive electronics solutions provider in China, is pleased to announce its acquisition of partial equity interest in NOVAUTO (Beijing) Co., Ltd (“NOVAUTO”), a startup company incubated by Tsinghua University, at a consideration of RMB15 million. NOVAUTO is engaged in the fast-growing intelligent driving platform industry. Given its capability of leveraging the strong reputation of Tsinghua University as well as the experience and expertise of its core team, the Group believes that NOVAUTO possesses superior competitiveness in the industry. The acquisition is set to create technological synergies together which will further enhance the Group’s overall R&D capability and drive long-term business growth.

In April 2019, NOVAUTO was established with the mission "Make Smart Driving Simpler", and NOVAUTO committed to developing automated deployment tools, plus AI light-weighting solution which can be applied to a variety of heterogeneous platforms and adapt to AI’s rapid iterations. Focusing on software and hardware architecture optimisation and intelligent driving communication’s middleware, NOVAUTO persists independent research and development of the "intelligent driving sensing & controlling platform" based on the requirements of variety Automated Driving scenarios. The company's first-generation "intelligent driving sensing & controlling platform" integrates the system software environment for the heterogeneous platforms, and adopts a reusable and modular software design to reduce the algorithms complexity and the difficulty of deploying. NOVAUTO’s solutions can fully meet the requirements of automotive makers and their suppliers for efficient, reliable and flexible heterogeneous computing platforms and its mass production. The Group believes that NOVAUTO’s solutions create growth prospects, values and play an important role in enabling development of the intelligent driving industry.
 
NOVAUTO is an intelligent driving core technology company incubated by the School of Vehicle and Mobility and Department of Electronic Engineering of Tsinghua University. Dr. Diange Yang and Dr. Yu Wang, both founders of the company boast solid academic background. Dr. Jian Zhang, Chief Executive Officer of NOVAUTO, holds a PhD in Computer Science on Artificial Intelligence from Tsinghua University. He was a member of Baidu’s core algorithm team, and had participated in a number of automotive intelligence projects. Dr. Shuang Liang, Chief Technology Officer of the company, had taken part in the research of high performance and highly reliable intelligent driving computing platform, conducted by the High Performance Computing team of the Department of Electronic Engineering at Tsinghua University in his postdoctoral research role. Mr. Shaochen Zhong, Chief Operating Officer of NOVAUTO, was a deep learning algorithm engineer at a technology company, and one of the start-up team members of DeePhi Tech (深鑒科技).

NOVAUTO announced earlier that it has completed A-round funding valued at tens of millions, in which certain renowned investors have participated, including Evergrande High-Tech Group, ZGC Qianyan Capital, Hemi Ventures, Paochu Investment and Turing Ventures. After its official launch in 2019, NOVAUTO received angel investment valued at tens of millions from ZGC Qianyan Capital, Qingkong Tiancheng, TusStar, Taiyou Fund, Tsinghua Research Capital and Tsinghua X-Lab, reflecting the market recognition for the company’s tremendous potential.

Mr. Eddie Chan, Co-CEO and Executive Director of Intron Technology, said, “Development of the domestic intelligent driving platform aligns with the national policy. Following the launch of 5G-enabled advanced automated driving, an intelligent driving platform is in-sync with the mega industry trend. Backed by Tsinghua University, NOVAUTO not only possesses related technologies but is also supported by government resources, enabling it to undertake an automated driving projects under the national ‘13th Five-year Plan’ and an exemplary automated driving project of 2022 Winter Olympics, reflecting the recognition for its capabilities in R&D and commercialisation. With NOVAUTO’s intelligent driving platform, the Group creates strong synergies for developing solutions in both hardware and software. We have launched a number of R&D cooperation projects with NOVAUTO, leveraging NOVAUTO’s intelligent driving computing technology and automated platform enhancing our mass-produced controller products to jointly support the domestic customers’ automated driving projects. Therefore, we believe the investment will strengthen our leading technological position in the industry and facilitate our long-term sustainable development.”

- End -

About Intron Technology Holdings Limited (英恒科技控股有限公司)
Intron Technology Holdings Limited is a fast-growing automotive electronics solutions provider in China focuses on providing solutions targeting critical automotive electronic components applied in New Energy, Body Control, Safety and Powertrain systems. The Group utilizes its research and development and engineering capabilities to provide solutions incorporating advanced semiconductor devices to help OEMs achieve industry leading performance.

Media Enquiries:
Strategic Financial Relations Limited

Back