HARMAN Worldwide, a world chief in automotive expertise and way of life audio, and an entirely owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics, has entered right into a definitive settlement to amass the Superior Driver Help Methods (ADAS) enterprise of ZF Group, comprising main automotive compute options, sensible cameras, radars and ADAS software program features. The transaction is valued at €1.5 billion.
Upon closing, HARMAN will combine ZF’s ADAS capabilities into its centralized compute and digital cockpit roadmap, enabling OEMs to deploy extra scalable, safety-integrated automobile architectures. The businesses will preserve robust help for current applications whereas aligning engineering, ADAS and compute groups to speed up innovation for next-generation platforms.
With this acquisition, HARMAN has secured strategic inroads within the ADAS and central compute platforms markets, reinforcing a basis that anchors and advances its position within the fast-growing SDV market.
By integrating ZF’s ADAS capabilities with HARMAN’s flagship Digital Cockpit choices inside a centralized compute design, the acquisition bolsters HARMAN’s roadmap for next-generation automobile architectures. The mixture creates a basis for future central compute options that deliver assisted and automatic driving options, security and consumer experiences on a shared platform. This method streamlines system design, reduces integration complexity, and helps extra environment friendly innovation cycles, permitting HARMAN to allow OEMs to scale differentiated, context-aware automobile experiences.
As a part of the settlement, roughly 3,750 ZF workers throughout Europe, the Americas and Asia are anticipated to transition to HARMAN upon closing of the transaction.
Christian Sobottka, Chief Government Officer and President, Automotive Division, HARMAN, mentioned, “The trade is at an inflection level the place security, intelligence, and in-cabin expertise should come collectively via a unified computing structure. With this settlement, we take a strategic step to increase our portfolio with complementary ADAS capabilities that unlock a brand new class of cross-domain experiences starting from perception-informed audio cues to extra customized, situation-aware driving. Mixed with HARMAN’s long-standing automotive experience and supported by Samsung’s broader expertise management, this positions us to assist OEMs design the subsequent era of clever, empathetic, and related autos.”
Mathias Miedreich, CEO of ZF Group, mentioned, “With HARMAN, we’ve got discovered the best companion to completely unlock the expansion and innovation potential of our ADAS enterprise. On the similar time, this deal makes an necessary contribution to lowering our firm’s debt and permits us to focus our sources on the core applied sciences wherein ZF is a world chief.”
Younger Sohn, Chairman of the Board of Administrators, HARMAN and Senior Advisor, Samsung Electronics, mentioned, “Samsung has a profitable document of strategic acquisitions that speed up innovation and increase what’s doable for our clients. Since buying HARMAN in 2017, the corporate has scaled its automotive and audio enterprise from $7 billion to greater than $11 billion as we speak. Including ZF’s ADAS capabilities builds on that momentum. HARMAN will additional increase its expertise basis to ship safer, extra clever, and extra intuitive in-vehicle experiences. This acquisition reinforces HARMAN’s management within the trade’s transformation and underscores Samsung’s long-term dedication to the way forward for mobility.”
Carolin Reichert, Chief Technique Officer of HARMAN, mentioned, “This transaction marks a significant milestone within the execution of HARMAN’s long-term technique and additional strengthens our portfolio. All through the method, we labored in a really constructive collaboration with ZF and demonstrated our capability to efficiently execute a extremely advanced carve-out.”
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