South Korea’s Hyundai Mobis said Thursday it has injected 25 billion won ($20 million) in Silicon Valley tech funds ACVC Partners and MOTUS Ventures, as part of its move to secure future mobility technology and next-generation business opportunities. 

ACVC Partners and MOTUS Ventures have been actively discovering and supporting startups which focus on developing future mobility core technologies, including next-generation sensors, biometrics and robotics. 

Hyundai Motor Group’s auto parts making unit said through the investment in such venture capitalists that discover and fund promising startups, it will create an ecosystem which can collaborate with startups from the nascent stage, while seeking large-scale investment in shares if their technologies become advanced. 

Since 2018, Hyundai Mobis has been actively making direct investments in local and overseas companies that develop future mobility technologies. In 2018, it invested in a Korean startup StradVision which possesses deep learning-based camera image detection technology. 

Last year, it clinched a 60 billion won investment deal with Velodyne Lidar to mass-produce Level 3 autonomous driving Lidar systems.

By Kim Da-sol (ddd@heraldcorp.com)