Bosch swallows start-up Five

With its second acquisition in a short space of time, the Group aims to drive forward the development of self-driving cars.

Bosch is buying the British start-up Five. The companies signed the contract at the beginning of April and agreed not to disclose the purchase price. For Bosch, the acquisition is a step towards consolidating its market position in the field of software and automated driving. Bosch recently acquired Atlatec GmbH, a provider of high-resolution digital maps. With these acquisitions, Bosch aims to become the only company that can offer all the building blocks for automated driving, from sensors to maps.

"Above all, automated driving should make road traffic safer. To this end, we want to continue to pick up speed in software development with Five and offer our customers technology 'made in Europe'," says Bosch board of management member Markus Heyn about the acquisition.

Founded in 2016, the start-up Five develops solutions for automated driving with the help of software and artificial intelligence. The company employs 140 people at six locations in the UK. With the help of the Five platform, real data from a fleet of test vehicles can be analyzed and a wide variety of test scenarios can be created to evaluate and validate system behavior. The tests will be used to further develop the software.