Intel to Take Stake in HERE Mapping Company

Silicon Valley chipmaker Intel Corp. says it will acquire a 15% stake in digital mapping company HERE, which Audi, BMW and Daimler purchased from Nokia in 2015.

The deal is expected to close by March. Financial details weren’t provided.

Intel and HERE also signed an agreement to collaborate on the development of a scalable system that supports real-time updates of highly detailed digital maps to help enable self-driving cars. Intel initially will work with HERE to test the technology on Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz vehicles. The partners hope to eventually expand availability to other carmakers.

Intel says it can help accelerate HERE’s efforts by supporting the creation of a universal, real-time digital location platform that links the vehicle to the cloud and other connected devices. In November Intel announced plans to invest more than $250 million over the next two years to help make "fully autonomous driving a reality."

HERE’s next-generation digital maps are said to be able to pinpoint a vehicle’s location to within centimeters compared with today’s systems that are accurate only to within meters. Teamed with vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications, the maps will give vehicles the ability to see obstacles beyond their field of vision and receive real-time updates about changes in traffic, road conditions, weather and other factors.

Late last month HERE agreed to partner with Israel’s Mobileye NV on crowd-sourced high-definition mapping for autonomous vehicles. That deal will integrate HERE’s maps with Mobileye’s proximity mapping processor system.

Last July, BMW inked a deal with Intel and Mobileye to develop technologies and open standards for highly and fully autonomous vehicles. At this week’s CES electronics show in Las Vegas, the three companies announced plans to begin testing a fleet of 40 autonomous BMW vehicles in the second half of 2017.