Qualcomm has agreed to acquire an Israeli fabless chipmaker called Autotalks, and according to TechCrunch, the deal will cost the company around $350 to $400 million. Autotalks creates chips and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication technologies dedicated towards boosting road safety for both ordinary and driverless vehicles. In its announcement, Qualcomm said that Autotalks' "production-ready, dual mode, standalone safety solutions" will be incorporated into the Snapdragon Digital Chassis, its set of cloud-connected assisted and autonomous driving technologies. Nakul Duggal, senior VP of automotive for Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., said in a statement: "We have been investing in V2X research, development and deployment since 2017 and believe that as the automotive market matures, a standalone V2X safety architecture will be needed for enhanced road user safety, as well as smart transportation system... We share Autotalks' decades-long experience and commitment to build V2X technologies and products with a focus on solving real-world road user safety challenges. We look forward to working together to deliver global V2X solutions that will help accelerate time-to-market and enable mass market adoption of this very important safety technology."

Connected car startups raked in over $1 billion in funding last year, even though most consumers have yet to hear the term, connected car. With more than 1,700 autotech startups now in the game, competition is ramping up at all levels of the automotive IoT ecosystem. From automotive cyber security solutions providers to connected head-up display companies, new autotechs are coming online almost daily. Growth and sustainability of the connected car market demands a symbiotic relationship between automakers and 3rd-party tech providers.Without major automakers, there is no market for autotech products. With 250 million connected vehicles projected to be on the road by 2020, there's plenty of opportunity for automakers, and for the connected car startup.