Hyundai Motor(005380) has disposed of all its equity in the U.S. Autonomous Driving technology company Aurora Innovation (Aurora). It comes seven years after it made an equity investment to secure Autonomous Driving technology.
According to Hyundai Motor's semiannual report on the 18th, Hyundai Motor sold all 4,698,633 shares (0.22% equity stake) of Aurora it held for a little over 29.8 billion won. The valuation gain or loss from the disposal came to 3.9 billion won.
Hyundai Motor entered into a strategic partnership with Aurora at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2018 in the United States and then carried out an equity investment to expand the collaboration.
Hyundai Motor planned to apply Aurora's Autonomous Driving system to the Nexo hydrogen electric vehicle and unveil a Level 4 Autonomous Driving vehicle by 2021, which allows operation without the driver monitoring the situation on designated sections such as highways.
In May 2019, Hyundai Motor participated in the Series B funding round and acquired 2,164,430 shares (0.71%) of Aurora for 23.8 billion won.
Afterward, as Aurora merged with a listed SPAC (special purpose acquisition company), it came to hold the current number of shares in line with the merger ratio, but its equity ratio decreased as it did not participate in Aurora's subsequent paid-in capital increase.
As Hyundai Motor Group accelerates development of its own Autonomous Driving model, the collaboration with Aurora appears to have come to an end.
Hyundai Motor Group has developed its own end-to-end Autonomous Driving solution, Atria AI, and is advancing Autonomous Driving technology through 42dot, acquired in 2019.
In March this year, it also announced a strategic collaboration with Nvidia to build an Autonomous Driving cooperation framework expanded to Level 4 robotaxis.