Volkswagen buys stake in digital specialist diconium

BERLIN - Volkswagen Group, the world's largest carmaker by sales, has purchased a 49 percent share in German digital specialist diconium as part of a wider digitalization drive, the Wolfsburg-based company announced on Friday.

The latest Volkswagen investment, which is still subject to approval by antitrust authorities, comes shortly after the automotive industry giant entered a strategic partnership with US software producer Microsoft to develop new cloud-computing services for its vehicles. According to Volkswagen the participation in Stuttgart-based diconium for an undisclosed price was intended to boost its digitalization-related know-how and business capabilities.

"Together, the two companies will continue the development of Volkswagen's business models and digital added-value services. Diconium will therefore become a key technology partner for the development of new digital services available via the Volkswagen Automotive Cloud," a statement by the carmaker read.

Diconium was established in 1995 and was described by Volkswagen as a leading specialist in the holistic development of digital business models. It has a total workforce of more than 800 people at locations in Germany, Portugal, the USA and India.

"At Volkswagen, we intend to expand our core business sustainably and to offer our customers more and more tailor-made digital value-added services in and around their vehicles," says Christoph Hartung, Volkswagen Head of Digital & New Business. "For this purpose, we are taking technology partners on board to assist us with development."

Among other projects, Volkswagen and diconium are planning to launch a global online sales platform allowing Volkswagen customers to purchase and manage all of the company's upcoming "We" car-sharing services and on-demand functions for their connected vehicles. The functions available will include multimedia streaming, automatic payment for fuel, battery charging and parking, and over-the-air updates.

Volkswagen has previously said that it would spend 34 billion euros ($38.6 billion) on the development of electric vehicles, self-driving vehicles, digitalization and other mobility services by 2022 and unveil 80 new electric models by 2025. The DAX-listed carmaker achieved gross combined revenue over more than 230 billion euros in 2017 and employed more than 600,000 workers across the world.