Chinese electric vehicle (EV) maker NIO (NYSE: NIO) has selected Cerence (NASDAQ: CRNC), a conversational AI technology company that focuses on the automotive industry, for collaboration to deploy voice technologies in its products.
“We’re proud to partner with NIO to support their users with an intuitive, intelligent, future-forward assistant experience,” said Charles Kuai, Corporate Senior Vice President & President, Greater China Region, Cerence, while announcing the collaboration on Thursday.
On October 1, 2019, Cerence completed its spin-off from Nuance to become an independent, next-generation automotive software company.
Created by spinning off the automotive business from Nuance, Cerence was on a mission to create immersive in-vehicle experiences that make travel more enjoyable, safer, more informative, and more entertaining.
Through the innovative integration of voice, haptics, gestures, emotion, and sight, Cerence enables a deeper connection between the driver and the car and the digital world around them.
Building on the strength of Nuance's 20 years in the automotive business, Cerence powers the nearly 300 million vehicles on the road today in more than 70 languages and provides AI support to nearly all major automakers, including Audi, BMW, Daimler, Toyota, Ford, Geely, SAIC, GM and others.
With the rapid development of connected, self-driving, electric and shared vehicles, Cerence has a tremendous market opportunity in artificial intelligence-enabled vehicles and travel assistant solutions to grow financially with multiple core and related opportunities.
Last month, Cerence added driver-customized wake words to its platform. The new feature debuted in BMW’s Intelligent Personal Assistant, enabling drivers to decide what will alert the AI in the car instead of the default ”Hey BMW.”
Personalized wake words are just the latest of Cerence’s rapid-fire feature roll-out this year, building on the My Car, My Voice service, which synthesizes a voice for the AI to use out of recordings submitted by the driver.
NIO says users have accumulated more than 1 billion kilometers
