Bosch Group invests in IOTA

Yesterday, the venture capital subsidiary of the Bosch Group announced that it had participated in the IOTA Foundation with a “significant” number of IOTA tokens. Since Bosch sees itself as a pioneer in the adoption of distributed ledger technologies, investment is a strategic move. It is about the development and implementation of this technology in the automotive industry and the Internet of Things (IoT). The announcement has had a very positive impact on the IOTA share price, which has already gained over 30% today.

Robert Bosch Venture Capital (RBVC) announced yesterday a substantial stake in the non-profit IOTA Foundation. The RBVC recently acquired a significant amount of IOTA tokens. In what amount exactly, was not disclosed. The RBVC is not primarily concerned with an investment, as stated in the press release. The Bosch Group hopes to use distributed ledger technology to control the components of vehicles and control units of the Internet of Things (IoT). Bosch aims to integrate the innovative technology into its own ecosystem as a target, in order to make it available to its most important partner companies. In order to intensify the cooperation, Dr. Ing. Hongquan Jiang join the advisory board of the IOTA Foundation.

IOTA, the first Distributed Ledger technology ever, goes far beyond the concept of Blockchain from 2008 because it does not consist of a chain of blocks. The nodes (participants) do not have to communicate with each other in a fixed sequence unlike the blockchain. At IOTA, they are completely free to choose their communication partners. In contrast to blockchain, IOTA was specifically designed to optimize the control of IoT applications. These are all sorts of smart devices that have an intelligent control unit and are also connected to the Internet. In terms of speed and cost, IOTA is far superior to the much older Blockchain technology. Since 2015, IOTA has been overseen by the non-profit organization IOTA Foundation, which ensures that it remains royalty-free for all developers. The exact differences between the two technologies have been recorded here for all readers in a separate tutorial.

The investment made by the Bosch Group is no coincidence. In the past, a collaboration with Volkswagen and innogy was announced in order to develop IOTA-based charging systems for cars in collaboration with the Foundation. Dr. Hongquan Jiang from Bosch believes in a great future for the new technology. They have been working together on various projects for three years now and share very similar visions with the foundation members. At the end of the joint effort is the most effective and cost-effective control of microcomputers in the IoT. This can be a smart refrigerator, toaster, or a vehicle part like a car battery that automatically tells the garage online that it needs to be replaced soon because of its state of charge, just to give a practical example. IOTA can be used in a variety of ways, which makes the technology very interesting for the Stuttgart conglomerate. Bosch is also involved in the development and sale of products from the fields of solar technology, building technology, industrial technology and much more.