TOKYO — Woven Planet, Toyota Motor Corp.’s high-tech spinoff, has established a $800 million investment fund to cherry pick up-and-coming technology companies around the world.
The fund, named Woven Capital, was outlined Jan. 29 in a kickoff event for the Woven Planet venture that included an overview of the new company’s upcoming products and strategies. Among the announcements was the Feb. 23 groundbreaking for its Woven City town of tomorrow.
James Kuffner, the American CEO of Woven Capital and a director at Toyota Motor, outlined the company’s ambitions in an online briefing from Woven’s headquarters in downtown Tokyo.
The creation of Woven Planet was announced last year as a holding company to subsume the subsidiary that handles Toyota’s automated driving development, Toyota Research Institute – Advanced Development, or TRI-AD.
The entity now oversees two new companies, Woven Core and Woven Alpha.
Woven Core focuses on automated driving.
Woven Alpha pioneers news businesses in field such as connectivity, onboard software and high-definition mapping.
Also under the umbrella is Woven Capital, brimming with nearly $1 billion that Toyota hopes to invest in cutting-edge technology it can channel into future products and innovation.
George Kellerman, Woven Capital’s managing director, said it will create a global portfolio of companies in areas such as automated driving, artificial intelligence, data analysis and smart cities.
The fund will operate over 10 years, with the first five being an active investment phase, said Hiroshi Saijo, Woven Planet’s vice president of business development and strategy.
The company is still plotting investments and hopes to announce the first projects in the coming months.
Toyota will also soon start piloting its own smart community. Dubbed Woven City, the project was announced in January 2020 as a real-world test lab for future mobility and urban connectivity. The company will break ground on its 170-acre site in the foothills of Mount Fuji on Feb. 23.
Daisuke Toyoda, the son of Toyota Motor President Akio Toyoda and a senior vice president at Woven Planet, will be the executive in charge of Woven City.
“We must continue to pivot, change and evolve,” the younger Toyoda said. “Woven City is key for Woven Planet Group in that it will be a place where we demonstrate and implement our innovation under real circumstances.”
Woven Planet also aims to prioritize software development, delivering a new software platform that can speed and improve the rollout of new automobiles while also taking Toyota into new fields outside of the traditional auto industry.
Toyota’s push comes as rivals make similar moves in an attempt to streamline the complicated computer systems that run their cars and have them interact more seamlessly with the vehicles’ mechanical and electronic architectures.
Volkswagen Group, for instance, said all its new models will run on a new vw.os operating system by 2025 and last year unified its fragmented information technology units into a $8 billion subsidiary called Car.Software that is tasked with developing such computer systems in-house.
Woven Alpha is working on something similar. It is called Arene, an open automotive operating system that will allow for “programmable cars.” Woven hopes to offer it to other companies.
Kuffner says Arene will be as groundbreaking as Microsoft Windows and Apple iOS were for personal computers and smartphones, ushering in a new era for automobiles. It will allow a vehicle’s software to be developed in parallel with its hardware, slashing development time.
