Embedded systems: Wind River changes hands again from TPG to Aptiv


The automotive supplier Aptiv has announced the acquisition of Wind River. The embedded specialist is changing hands again after Intel sold it to investor TPG in 2016. According to the official press release, Aptiv will pay the current owner $ 4.3 billion in cash.

With the takeover, Aptiv is primarily taking into account the increasing importance of software in the automotive sector. The managing director and CEO Kevin Clark speaks of the greatest change in the automotive industry in more than 100 years, in which “software-defined vehicles are increasingly becoming critical elements of a broader intelligent ecosystem”.

Founded in 1981, Wind River provides software and services in the embedded field. One of the best-known products is the real-time operating system VxWorks, which in the meantime offers not only C and C ++ but also connections for the programming languages ​​Rust and Python. With Wind River Linux, the company also offers a commercial Linux variant for embedded systems. According to its own information, annual sales in 2021 were 400 million US dollars.

In 2009, Intel bought the embedded specialist for $ 884 million. However, Intel had not achieved its main goal of strengthening its presence in the area of ​​smartphones and other mobile devices. Therefore, Wind River sold it to the independent investor TPG in 2018 at undisclosed conditions.

After the exit from Intel, the Wind River managing director Jim Douglas announced a stronger focus on the edge and cloud areas. Vertically, the automotive sector is one of Wind River’s fields of application, alongside medical and industrial systems, as well as aerospace.

This is where the intersection with Aptiv can be found: The automotive supplier was created in 2017 after Delphi Automotive split up and took over the areas of connectivity, vehicle electronics and autonomous driving. The main headquarters are now in Dublin, although the Delphi Corporation has its roots as a spin-off from General Motors in the USA. Aptiv’s numerous projects include a cooperation with Hyundai that began in 2019 with the aim of building a platform for autonomous driving.

Further details on the acquisition can be found in the joint press release from Aptiv and Wind River.


(rme)

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