Excelfore Receives Investment

Excelfore announces that is has received investments from Molex and HELLA, two major names in the automotive ecosystem.

This is the first time that HELLA, through its Venture Capital arm HELLA Ventures, has invested in Excelfore, following previously announced cooperation on bi-directional OTA software updating and data gathering for automotive components. Molex also invested in the Excelfore Series A round of funding, which was announced in January 2017.

Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Excelfore is driving smart mobility with innovative middleware for in-vehicle and vehicle-to-cloud networks, which is embedded into leading products such as the Molex automotive network platform. Excelfore's software enables automotive OEMs and manufacturers to build the next generation of connected cars.

"These two new investments are a significant vote of confidence in Excelfore, and our eSync technology," said Shrinath Acharya, CEO, Excelfore. The eSync over-the-air (OTA) system helps carmakers to address increasingly expensive and inconvenient vehicle recalls, creating a two-way pipeline for updating software and gathering data from the increasing number of electronic components in modern cars.

HELLA has recently demonstrated using eSync to provide features-on-demand, for example providing car owners the ability to choose new advanced lighting features to be installed on their vehicles on a trial or permanent basis.

"The eSync platform is going to play an important role in HELLA's connected car strategy, and in shaping the automotive industry," said Dr Rainer Holve, Chief Digital Officer at HELLA. "We're excited to be able to invest in Excelfore, and to help them develop the technology further."

Molex has leveraged Excelfore's eSync capabilities in conjunction with Molex 10Gbps Automotive Ethernet development to enable pushing software updates across a flexible high-speed vehicle network, and to enable pulling data for diagnosing and tracking vehicle status. The combined system helps enable a more flexible and dynamic vehicle platform that provides next generation performance while supporting a wide range of hardware, including sensors, cameras, video displays, ECUs and network gateways.

"Molex views embedded middleware from Excelfore as a key part of a fully-integrated platform, providing industry standards-based, scalable and agile networks in the vehicle and beyond to the cloud," said Lily Yeung, vice president, Molex Ventures. "We look forward to the continued collaboration with Excelfore for in-vehicle networking and cloud connectivity."

HELLA and Molex showcased solutions based on eSync at this year's CES2018 exhibition in Las Vegas. Molex and HELLA are both also members of the eSync Alliance, a multi-company initiative for driving a common platform for Over-the-Air (OTA) updating and data gathering in the automotive electronics sector.

About Molex Ventures:
Molex Ventures, LLC, a subsidiary of Molex Electronic Technologies, LLC, proactively identifies companies, startups and technologies aligned with emerging and expanding markets for Molex product solutions. The group oversees the company's venture and early stage investment pipeline and processes. By directing industry and compliance expertise, global design and manufacturing capabilities, equity investments, venture capital and licensing rights, Molex Ventures helps to bring early stage technologies from concept to commercialization to market expansion.

About HELLA:
HELLA is a global, family-owned company, listed on the stock exchange, with more than 40,000 employees at over 125 locations in some 35 countries. The HELLA Group develops and manufactures products for lighting technology and electronics for the automotive industry and also has one of the largest retail organizations for automotive parts, accessories, diagnostics, and services within Europe. With more than 7,000 people working in research and development, HELLA is one of the most important innovation drivers on the market. Furthermore, with sales of EURO 7.1 billion in the fiscal year of 2017/2018, the HELLA Group is one of the top 40 automotive parts suppliers in the world and one of the 100 largest German industrial companies. www.hella.com

About Excelfore:
An innovative provider of cloud platform and connectivity applications for intelligent transportation, Excelfore provides middleware solutions for smart mobility networks that enable OEMs and suppliers to build the next generation of smart, autonomous and learning vehicles, fleets and associated infrastructure. Excelfore products include protocol stacks for in-vehicle Ethernet audio-video bridging (AVB) and time-sensitive networking (TSN), the cloud-to-vehicle eSync System for OTA updates, diagnostics and telematics, as well as eLearn machine learning platform. www.excelfore.com