Innoviz Technologies has announced a collaboration with Whale Dynamic, an autonomous driving company based in China. These companies are joining forces to integrate Innoviz’s high-performance, solid-state LiDAR sensors and perception software with Whale Dynamic’s newest intelligent autonomous driving platform. Whale’s mission is to bring autonomous transportation to automakers, universities, and traffic authorities in a safe, approachable, and affordable way. Innoviz has been partnering with many other Asian-based companies in the past year and has made large strides in the autonomous driving market. This opens Whale up to expansion and drives it closer to its mission.

Whale offers a platform that interprets information obtained from the sensors that allows it to make decisions in order to guide the vehicle. Whale was enticed to work with Innoviz as the InnovizOne LiDAR is leading performance and has low-power consumption. China has the largest vehicle market in the world and the Israel-based company has been looking for an in for quite some time. Hesai Technology is a Chinese-based company providing LiDAR sensors for different industries, making them the main competitor in the Chinese autonomous vehicle market and has seen 3% growth in the past year.

Innoviz Technologies is a top performer when it comes to the LiDAR  sector, with 42 patent assets in the space just in the past two to three years. Innoviz’s main competitors are Analog Photonics, Luminar Technologies, Velodyne, and Hesai Technology. Innoviz is not only becoming a leader, but is doing it rather quickly. Whale holds technology patents in vehicle autonomy, ranging from multi-sensor fusion perception, spatial-temporal synchronization, vehicle embedded systems, HD mapping, centimeter level localization, and more (as mentioned on its website). However, none are in the space or are easy to find via Google Patents. It is possible Whale is patenting under other names or is buying its technology from other companies. If Whale wants to continue to grow and become a dominant leader in the space it needs to ensure that it owns all of the patents it claims to have. This could be a risky deal for Innoviz as Whale is new to the industry. Innoviz better keep an eye out as it could have put its own patents on the line.

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