TOKYO, Japan, January 20, 2022 – Honda Motor Co., Ltd. today announced that, in December 2021, the company invested in U.S. (California)-based Helm.ai to strengthen its software technology development in the areas of artificial intelligence (AI) and computer vision*1 technologies. Helm.ai has key strengths in the area of AI-based image recognition technologies advanced through unsupervised learning*2.
Helm.ai is an AI software startup established in November 2016, and Honda and Helm.ai have been working in collaboration since 2019 through Honda Xcelerator*3, a global open innovation program of Honda. Honda invested in Helm.ai to strengthen value creation in the efforts to make mobility products more intelligent and to generate greater achievements more quickly. The financing will further strengthen the relationship between the two companies and accelerate development of original solutions for Honda that combine Honda technologies and AI technologies of Helm.ai.
Honda will continue offering highly-competitive and highly-attractive products and services to its customers by establishing relationships through the Honda Xcelerator program with companies which have cutting-edge technologies in various areas.
＜About Helm.ai＞
- Head office location: Menlo Park, California, U.S.A.
- Business:
Development and licensing of AI software,
including AI-based image recognition software - Representative:Vladislav Voroninski, CEO/Co-founder
- Establishment: 2016
- *1Technology to recognize specific elements from computer-based visual information and provide necessary information based on the results of such recognition.
- *2Unsupervised learning is one of the methods of machine learning, which supports AI. Unlike supervised learning through which AI learns the correct answers to derive from labeled input data, unsupervised learning lets AI learn without being provided with the correct answers and derives the patterns and unique characteristics of the unlabeled data on its own.
- *3Honda Xcelerator is a global open innovation program designed to facilitate collaboration between startups and Honda. The program is led by Honda Innovations Inc., a subsidiary of Honda Motor Co., Ltd. based in Silicon Valley in the U.S.