Himax Acquires Emza Visual Sense

GlobeNewswire: Himax has decided to exercise its options to fully acquire Emza Visual Sense Ltd. Terms of the investment were not disclosed. The transaction is expected to close by the end of the second quarter, 2018.

Emza is an Israeli company dedicated to the development of extremely efficient visual sensors that include proprietary machine-vision algorithms and architectures that enable always-on visual sensing capabilities, achieving orders of magnitude improvement in power consumption, price and form factor. Aiming at the booming computer vision market, Himax made a strategic cash investment for 45.1% equity of Emza in April 2017, with one-year options to acquire the remaining 54.9% of Emza’s equity and all outstanding stock options. Emza will continue as it is after the acquisition, and will maintain Emza company brand as well as the WiseEye brand product lines.

“With the full acquisition of Emza, Himax will be uniquely positioned for IoT solutions, which require tight integration of the critical skills and knowledge of Himax’s CMOS technology and ASIC design with Emza’s computer vision algorithms. Himax will be positioned to offer significant value to our customers and to enter new markets beyond consumer electronics, such as connected homes, smart buildings and security, and extend our reach into new IoT markets with interest in other Himax products such as our 3D sensing solutions,” said Jordan Wu, CEO of Himax.

“Our team members are excited about becoming part of the Himax family. The synergy between the two companies and our mutual skills will accelerate the development of highly integrated turn-key IoT solutions to take machine learning-based computer vision applications to a whole new level of performance, price and autonomy. We will continue to pursue the IoT market and customers,” said Yoram Zylberberg, CEO of Emza.