TIER IV has joined Arm Total Design for Physical AI, the company said. The program brings together partners from across the computing and software ecosystem to speed up development and deployment of physical AI, with the aim of making it easier to build intelligent systems that operate in the physical world. TIER IV said the move builds on its existing work with Arm and is intended to make Autoware, its open-source autonomous driving software, more readily available across Arm-based SoCs and in-vehicle computing platforms, which the company said would help semiconductor manufacturers and OEM manufacturers develop autonomous driving systems faster.
As a member, TIER IV will contribute its open-source autonomous driving expertise and its experience developing systems built on Autoware. The company said it aims to connect the Autoware ecosystem with a wider network of computing and technology partners so that developers can bring autonomous driving software into real-world use.
TIER IV said the membership extends its collaboration with Arm through Open AD Kit, an open framework developed within the Autoware Foundation ecosystem to simplify development and deployment of Autoware across computing platforms. That work pairs open-source autonomous driving software with Arm-based computing technology. The companies demonstrated it at CES 2026, where Open AD Kit was shown on Arm-based computing platforms. TIER IV said it now aims to offer Autoware in ready-to-use configurations that cover development from Arm-based SoCs to in-vehicle computing platforms.
Shinpei Kato, TIER IV's founder and chief executive, said open-source software on its own is not enough to make autonomous driving accessible, and that developers also need a practical route for putting that software onto the computing platforms that power real-world systems. He said the collaboration with Arm through Open AD Kit had helped close that gap, and that joining Arm Total Design for Physical AI would extend the work to a broader set of partners.
Dermot O'Driscoll, Arm's vice president of go-to-market for Physical AI, said scalable autonomy depends on making it easier for software and hardware to develop together, and that the two companies' work through Open AD Kit had already shown that potential. TIER IV said it will continue working with Arm and other partners to make Autoware more accessible across computing platforms and to lower development barriers for companies building autonomous driving systems.
