Truck-maker TRATON and Applied Intuition have amped up their collaboration focused on next generation vehicle software and architecture. Applied Intuition, a Silicon Valley-based vehicle software supplier, and TRATON, one of the world’s leading commercial vehicle manufacturers, today announced a strategic partnership to deploy industry-leading vehicle software platforms for all TRATON brands — Scania, MAN, International, and Volkswagen Truck & Bus. The goal of the partnership is to accelerate TRATON’s technological leadership and enable the company to deliver full software-defined vehicle (SDV) capabilities.
Applied Intuition will provide AI-powered software products for vehicles globally, leveraging its software expertise and TRATON’s experience in industrializing software-driven commercial vehicles at scale. The TRATON GROUP brands have a strong history of developing software in-house, enabling them to provide highly reliable and performant vehicles to their customers. Applied Intuition offers a scalable, extensible, and modular platform to develop vehicle software faster, as well as AI-powered tooling for the development and validation of full vehicle software.
The strategic partnership combines both companies’ strengths to deliver full SDV capabilities to all TRATON GROUP products in the trucking ecosystem. The partners aim to deploy an industry-leading vehicle software platform and a developer toolchain across all TRATON brands globally. This initiative includes virtualizing testing in a cloud-native environment to test faster and earlier in the development process.
Strategic vehicle software collaboration
“The TRATON GROUP’s products are increasingly driven by software,” said Niklas Klingenberg, Member of the Executive Board of TRATON SE, responsible for Group Research & Development (R&D). “We have always had strong software competencies in-house, but it’s important for us to work with a capable software partner to complement our capabilities.
Applied Intuition brings expertise in modern vehicle platforms, developer tooling, and a laser focus on execution speed that perfectly aligns with our goals.”
From the very beginning, there has always been a strong cultural and technological alignment between our engineering teams, especially around technical excellence, speed, and safety,” said Qasar Younis, co-founder and CEO of Applied Intuition. “This makes me even more excited to deepen our relationship with TRATON and set a new benchmark for vehicle software across the commercial vehicle and transportation industries.”
Founded in 2017, Applied Intuition delivers an AI-powered ADAS/AD toolchain, vehicle OS, and autonomy stack to help customers shorten time to market, build high-quality systems, and create next-generation consumer experiences. The company notes it has worked with 18 of the top 20 global automakers, including partnerships with companies like Nissan on automated collision avoidance systems and customers such as May Mobility and Torc in the autonomous driving arena.
The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California. In 2023, Applied Intuition entered a merger agreement with truck autonomy developer Embark, essentially acquiring key assets such as internal tools, data, and software. Applied Intuition also supports vehicle development for the construction, mining, agriculture, and defense industries.
Applied Intuition and TRATON’s strategic partnership comes after five years of successful joint collaboration on tools for advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and automated driving (AD) development. For the partnership announced today, the focus is on the vehicle software platform and developer tooling for vehicle software more generally, which enables capabilities like ADAS and AD to be built upon it.
Image Credits: Photo by Medienstürmer on Unsplash
Noah Nguyen is a multi-talented developer who brings a unique perspective to his craft. Initially a creative writing professor, he turned to Dev work for the ability to work remotely. He now lives in Seattle, spending time hiking and drinking craft beer with his fiancee.
