L-R: Gwanggu Lee, MD, Kia India with Prof. K N Satyanarayana, Director, IIT-Tirupati.

Kia India, a leading mass premium carmaker of the country, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Indian Institute of Technology, Tirupati (IIT-Tirupati), with an aim to accelerate engineering excellence, promote research-led innovation and nurturing future-ready automotive and industrial talent.

As part of the understanding, Kia India will invest INR 350 million over a five-year period (2025–2029) to support academic infrastructure, collaborative research programs and student development initiatives at IIT-Tirupati. The company will also support establishing the institution as a prominent centre of excellence in advanced manufacturing, electric mobility and sustainable automotive technologies.

As part of the agreement, an internship programme with Pre-Placement Offers (PPOs) will be introduced for students, strengthening the bridge between academic learning and industry practice. The partnership also includes scholarships and financial assistance for deserving M.Tech students, awarded based on both academic merit and financial need, ensuring wider access to advanced education.

A key feature of the collaboration is the establishment of a ‘Makers Laboratory’ on campus — a state-of-the-art innovation hub where students will be able to design and build prototypes across disciplines. This facility is expected to drive hands-on research and reinforce IIT-Tirupati’s position as a centre for applied technological advancement.

Gwanggu Lee, MD and CEO, Kia India, said, "This partnership is not merely the signing of an MoU — it is the coming together of shared values and a unified vision for the future of mobility and engineering in India. At Kia, we firmly believe in the transformative power of education, research and collaborative innovation. By joining forces with IIT-Tirupati, we aim to nurture highly skilled engineers and technologists, equipped to lead advancements in sustainable mobility and industrial manufacturing. Together, we are building more than infrastructure — we are building opportunities, capabilities and a foundation for meaningful societal impact.”

Going forward, the partnership will also explore international academic partnerships between IIT-Tirupati and reputed Korean universities, facilitating student and faculty exchange programs and joint research initiatives in emerging technologies.

Prof. K N Satyanarayana, Director, IIT-Tirupati, said, "We are delighted to partner with Kia India in this forward-looking collaboration, which resonates deeply with our commitment to research excellence and nation-building. This initiative will provide our students with exposure to global industry practices, global learning opportunities, and advanced infrastructure. Beyond academic benefits, this partnership signifies our joint resolve to contribute to India’s aspirations in sustainable industrial development and technological leadership. We look forward to creating impactful innovations and empowering our students to shape the future of mobility.”

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Pre-owned car marketplace Cars24 has announced the launch of AI Labs, a dedicated initiative designed to develop artificial intelligence-native products and support early-stage entrepreneurs.

As part of the program, the company has committed a USD 20 million investment fund targeted at startups and development teams building transformative AI technologies.

The move marks an expansion of Cars24’s internal technology strategy, where machine learning and artificial intelligence models have already been integrated into core business operations to manage decision-making workflows and customer experience interfaces. Through AI Labs, the company will extend its technical resources externally to independent software engineers and startup founders.

To establish the infrastructure for the program, Cars24 has partnered with technology providers including OpenAI, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and ElevenLabs. This ecosystem will provide participating developers with cloud infrastructure, technical expertise, distribution networks and advanced language and voice synthesis models to accelerate product deployment.

The operational focus of AI Labs is divided into three primary activities:

• Build: Developing proprietary AI-native applications and contributing to global open-source software innovation.
• Partner: Collaborating with established artificial intelligence firms to encourage industry experimentation and technology adoption.
• Invest: Supplying seed capital and strategic support to early-stage businesses building software categories.

Beyond direct equity investments, the initiative will fund community engagement programs, including regional hackathons, builder incubation programs and collaborative open-source projects designed to stimulate developer experimentation.

Vikram Chopra, Founder and CEO, Cars24, said, “Every major technology shift creates a handful of companies that go on to define the future. We believe AI is the biggest shift of our generation, and the opportunity ahead is far larger than anything we've seen before. Over the last few years, we've seen AI fundamentally change how we operate, build products, and serve customers AI Labs is our way of giving back to the ecosystem that is shaping this future. We want to back founders early, help them move faster and support the people building things that seem impossible today but inevitable tomorrow.”

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Automotive supplier Valeo and Electronic Design Automation software provider Zuken have announced a strategic partnership to develop an open, artificial intelligence-assisted electronic design platform. The collaboration will operate under a joint program named the ‘Zuken Valeo InnoLab’.

The initiative integrates Zuken's AI architecture with Valeo’s custom AI agents and industrial data to create a real-time collaborative ecosystem between software tools and engineers. The primary objective of the program is to reduce hardware design timelines while maintaining structural robustness across complex automotive electronic systems.

The technical development framework spans the entire electronic design flow and is organised into four main operational areas:

• Functional Generative Design: Valeo will deploy its generative AI models within Zuken’s System Planner software to instantly generate and evaluate multi-criteria system architectures based on predefined corporate standards.
• Digital Continuity: Zuken’s open architecture will interface with Valeo’s existing digital ecosystem to provide end-to-end data traceability. This integration is designed to comply with the Automotive SPICE 4.0 (ASPICE4.0) Hardware Engineering process group standard, allowing Valeo's AI to process data and execute automated actions directly within the platform.
• Assisted Detailed Design: Valeo will integrate virtual AI copilot agents to assist engineering teams in real time with hardware rule verification, solution searching, and constraint implementations. Concurrently, Zuken is developing native AI functions to accelerate schematic entries by drawing from Valeo’s standardised components database.
• Automated Placement and Routing: Physical circuit integration will utilise Zuken’s Design Force engine, which features automated placement and routing algorithms. Valeo will use Zuken's software development kit to train the AI engine against specific automotive environmental and physical constraints to achieve correct initial executions.

Christophe Le Ligne, Vice-President – Research and Development, Valeo, said, “For Valeo, Zuken is much more than a software provider; it is a true innovation partner. The power of Zuken’s AI roadmap, combined with the exceptional openness of its architecture, allows us to hybridise our own artificial intelligence tools with their engine. This win-win partnership is the best way to tackle the challenge of automotive complexity by slashing our design times while guaranteeing 100% robustness.”

Ryosuke Takagi, Executive Officer and General Manager – R&D Division, Zuken, added, “Our vision at Zuken has always been to provide intelligent tools that adapt to our customers’ most complex challenges. Collaborating with a technological leader like Valeo pushes our ‘Autonomous Brain’ roadmap to its highest level of performance. By opening our System Planner, Design Gateway, and Design Force solutions to Valeo’s AI agents, we demonstrate that the true power of AI in engineering lies in the alliance between a high-performance software engine and expert industrial know-how.”

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Artificial intelligence software developer Helm.ai has launched two foundation models, GenSim-3 and VidGen-3, establishing a native Full HD (1920x1080) resolution standard for generative simulation across a 6-camera, 360-degree surround-view suite.

The architecture delivers 5x the pixel density of industry benchmarks to assist automotive developers facing the limitation where physical collection of edge cases becomes logistically restrictive.

Traditional generative world models typically cap resolution at roughly 0.4 megapixels per camera. Helm.ai’s platform outputs a native 2 megapixels per camera, yielding a synchronised 12-megapixel synthetic canvas per timestep. This specification matches the hardware parameters of production-grade vehicle cameras to reduce the domain gap for SAE Level 2 through Level 4 autonomous vehicle development.

The platform functions as a virtual sensor twin by mathematically replicating physical constraints and hardware anomalies, including lens flares, sensor banding patterns, and exposure blinding. To accommodate different neural network training routines, the pipeline can be configured to a high-speed validation mode using a three-camera setup at 30 frames per second, or a spatial context mode generating a six-camera surround view at 5 frames per second.

Data generation is split into two operational pipelines. GenSim-3 focuses on data augmentation by modifying environmental parameters such as weather, lighting, and object surfaces across real-world video segments at native 2MP resolution. VidGen-3 focuses on data creation, synthesising driving sequences from scratch by simulating environments, agent behaviours, and traffic logic without baseline video to patch geographic data gaps.

Helm.ai achieved the 2MP standard using a cluster of a few hundred GPUs rather than the thousands typically required for sub-HD video generation. This framework reduces the GPU infrastructure footprint for vehicle manufacturers and provides a method for compressing autonomous driving software onto mass-market on-vehicle compute chips.

Vladislav Voroninski, CEO and Founder, Helm.ai, said, "We are moving the industry from standard 'AI video' to authentic, hardware-accurate sensor emulation. By leading with a Full HD (2MP) standard and a 12-megapixel total aggregate capability per timestep, we have solved the resolution bottleneck that has historically limited the utility of generative AI in safety-critical systems. By optimising our compute architecture, we are giving our partners a high-performance platform to validate their autonomous stacks using synthetic data that perfectly matches the fidelity of their actual production sensors."

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Global automotive technology supplier Marelli has marked the 30th anniversary of its flagship electronics manufacturing plant in Guangzhou. Established in 1996 as Marelli’s inaugural manufacturing investment in China, the facility has transformed from a baseline assembly outpost into a major smart manufacturing and hardware-software validation centre.

Over the past three decades, the facility has expanded from a single operational production line with approximately 100 technicians into a 30,000-square-meter automotive electronics campus.

Today, the facility employs nearly 1,000 people and runs 66 active production lines, manufacturing components for both localised Chinese vehicle programs and global vehicle architectures.

The campus houses an adjacent, fully integrated Engineering Center that holds more than 100 registered patents. The manufacturing framework integrates high-precision assembly lines, automated optical bonding modules and site-wide rooftop solar arrays designed to manage factory energy overheads and lower operational carbon density.

The Guangzhou plant functions as a strategic industrialisation hub focused on low-cost, scalable architectures suited for the industry transition toward connected, software-defined vehicles (SDVs). The facility specialises in several high-growth hardware and display segments like advanced display solutions based on Mini-LED and MicroLED technologies. Additional key platforms include electronic control units (ECUs) for body and seat systems, zone control units, as well as digital cockpits, digital instrument clusters, and 5G telematics systems.

Ravi Tallapragada, President of Marelli’s Electronics business unit, said, “Our Guangzhou plant is a cornerstone of Marelli’s Electronics business in China and a powerful example of how innovation and advanced manufacturing can drive sustainable growth. Over the past 30 years, the team has continuously evolved its capabilities, developing advanced technologies and scalable platforms that address the rapid transformation of the automotive industry, building on long-standing collaboration with customers and partners. I’m proud of our team in Guangzhou and confident that the plant will continue to play a key role in shaping Marelli’s future globally.”

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