TIER IV joined Arm's physical AI program to package Autoware for Arm chips

TIER IV said on October 1 that it had joined Arm Total Design for Physical AI, a partner program the chip designer describes as bringing together companies across the computing and software ecosystem to speed the development and deployment of physical AI.

The Tokyo company, which develops Autoware, the open-source software stack for autonomous driving, said it would contribute its expertise in open-source autonomous driving and its experience building Autoware-based systems, and that it aimed to connect the Autoware ecosystem with a broader network of computing and technology partners.

TIER IV said the work builds on an existing collaboration with Arm through Open AD Kit, an open framework developed inside the Autoware Foundation ecosystem to simplify the development and deployment of Autoware across computing platforms. That collaboration was demonstrated at CES 2026, where Open AD Kit was shown running on Arm-based computing platforms. Building on it, TIER IV said it aimed to make Autoware available in ready-to-use configurations supporting development from Arm-based SoCs through to in-vehicle computing platforms, which it said would help semiconductor manufacturers and carmakers speed development of autonomous driving systems.

Shinpei Kato, founder and chief executive of TIER IV, said that making autonomous driving accessible takes more than open-source software and that developers also need “a practical path to bring that software onto the computing platforms that power real-world systems.” Dermot O’Driscoll, Arm’s vice president of go-to-market for physical AI, was also quoted in the release.

No commercial terms, volumes or carmaker names were given. TIER IV is listed in Tokyo and Arm is listed in New York; neither company’s filings carried anything on the announcement, so the release is the whole record of it.