A few thoughts on the strategic investment in Seeing Machines taken by Mitsubishi Electric Mobility Corporation, part of the huge Mitsubishi conglomerate.

• It secures the cash for Seeing Machines to hit breakeven regardless of the vagaries of the economy, automotive sector or machinations of any single industry player or partner. 
• It ensures that when a bid is made for Seeing Machine it will be at a very competitive price. The company cannot possibly go on the cheap. 
• It provides a local partner in the Japanese market, which should make it much easier to gain a strategic stranglehold in the Japanese automotive sector, while also ensuring further diversification in its Tier 1 relationships.
• Via Mitusubishi’s network we should see Gen 3 Guardian sales in trucks rocket from here on in. It also produces and sells buses and trucks via the FUSO brand – a collaboration with Daimler Trucks. 
• It potentially opens up new markets to Seeing Machines technology. Mitsubishi manufacturers road construction, agricultural equipment and even forklifts, which could use Seeing Machines’ driver monitoring technology to reduce accidents caused by driver fatigue.
• The fact that Mitsubishi was determined to take the maximum percentage of shares it could take without triggering a bid (19.9 per cent) tells me how highly it values this investment. It plans to develop more personalised robots in the future for a rapidly ageing society in Japan and combining Seeing Machines’s human fatigue/cognitive state detection with heartbeat detection would be useful features for a domestic ‘carer’ robot to have. 

Consumer Electronics Show

With the Consumer Electronics Show (Jan 7-9) expected to bring news of further license deals, the list of possible buyers of Seeing Machines grows ever longer. 

Moreover, in calendar 2025 I expect its market leadership to become both undeniable and unassailable in the medium term, as:

• It surpasses 5m cars on the road with its DMS/OMS technology
• It becomes profitable on a monthly basis by June.
• Guardian goes past 100k units.
• The Aviation product is readied for use. 

VW Tayron on sale now

The Volkswagen Tayron, which includes Seeing Machines DMS in its rear view mirror, is due to go on sale in the UK this week. 

The first UK reviews of the vehicle should take place in the spring, possibly mid-to-late March; there may well be some reviews from overseas drives before that, in late February or early March.

This should rapidly boost the profile of its life-saving technology, not to mention public interest in buying shares in a tangible AI product.

The writer holds stock in Seeing Machines