- It will bring innovative camera-based sensing and viewing solutions for advanced driver-assistance systems: indie
- With the acquisition, the company hopes to immediately extend its market reach in Japan and Korea
indie Semiconductor, an Autotech solutions innovator, recently announced that it has entered a definitive agreement to purchase GEO Semiconductor, a private fabless semiconductor supplier. indie believes that the acquisition of GEO will add immediate scale to indie’s image processing program and enables true sensor fusion of Radar, LiDAR, Ultrasound and Computer Vision solutions in advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) applications. The company mentioned that the transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2023, subject to customary closing conditions.
Mentioning GEO’s camera-based sensing and viewing capabilities, indie said that it shipped to some of the world’s largest automotive OEMs including Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Nissan and Toyota. With 100 global patents and design wins across over 20 Tier 1s and 400 car models, GEO has programs with every major image sensor supplier in the world and is engaged in multiple EV and autonomous vehicle programs, it further added.
As per indie, image processing systems are playing an increasingly important role in ADAS applications with over 20 cameras on board next-gen vehicles serving different functions from object and lane detection, to surround view, night vision and driver and occupant monitoring. Collectively, it said, these functions are enabling key use cases such as lane change assist, highway pilot, e-mirror, blind spot detection, occupant safety, automated parking and higher levels of driver automation. Citing data from IHS, it added that around 265 million camera ECUs will be needed to support the global automotive market in 2023, growing to 430 million units by 2028 and creating an $8.5 billion total addressable semiconductor market.
indie’s co-founder and CEO, Donald McClymont remarked, “It’s rare that acquisition targets are a perfect fit, but this is indeed the case with GEO. Camera processing is at the core of the majority of use cases within ADAS applications. indie’s acquisition of GEO Semiconductor immediately rounds out our Computer Vision product portfolio with field-proven, differentiated solutions, enabling us to capitalize on the rapid proliferation of automotive image processors. At a higher level, GEO is complementary in terms of products, customers and global sales channels while, at the same time, highly synergistic operationally with massive cross-selling opportunities. Further, this acquisition completes our sensor fusion mosaic spanning Radar, LiDAR, Ultrasound and Computer Vision, bringing us a major step closer towards realizing our strategic vision of enabling the uncrashable car and creating an Autotech powerhouse.”
Extremely excited to be joining forces with indie, GEO Semiconductor’s president and CEO, Dave Orton said: As a relatively small private company, GEO has made remarkable progress since our founding in 2009 and full pivot to automotive product development in 2015. We’ve launched truly breakthrough vision processing ADAS solutions but were limited in the size of programs we could win. Leveraging the indie platform and its proven scalability, we can now unleash GEO’s full potential and offer leading Tier 1s and car OEMs unprecedented camera resolution, low latency, power efficiency and ultra-fast processing of image data for enhanced safety systems within next-generation vehicles.”
Subject to the terms and conditions of the definitive agreement, indie will pay $180 million in the aggregate to GEO equity and debt holders at closing, comprised of $90 million in cash plus around 12 million indie Class A common shares, based on a 20-day VWAP. Further, if certain performance targets are exceeded over an 18-month post-closing period, there is an opportunity for such holders to earn up to $90 million more in equity, collared between $8.50 and $11.50 per INDI Class A common share. The boards of directors of both companies have approved the transaction. indie expects the acquisition to be accretive to 2023 non-GAAP earnings per share.
US-based indie is involved in the Autotech revolution with next-gen automotive semiconductors and software platforms. They focus on edge sensors spanning multiple modalities, including radar, LiDAR, ultrasound and computer vision for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), user experience and electrification applications.
Headquartered in San Jose, CA, GEO Semiconductor Inc. is a private fabless semiconductor company developing camera video processors for automotive viewing and ADAS cameras.
