For fifteen years, Hyundai played by everyone else's rules in Silicon Valley. The company showed up there as a guest — through its open-innovation platform Hyundai Ventures, launched in 2011 and renamed CRADLE in 2017: find startups, invest, plug in outside technology. Now Hyundai has decided to stop being a guest. Next to CRADLE, a new unit called AVP Silicon Valley has appeared — a separate center whose job is no longer to search for outside ideas, but to build its own: bringing car development closer to AI architecture, autonomous driving and robotics.
The new division is led by senior vice president Jeremy Ma — and this looks like anything but a random pick. His resume includes computer vision, robotics and autonomous systems work at NASA, Apple, Toyota Research Institute and NVIDIA. The credentials speak for themselves. Hyundai isn't yet disclosing the office's actual opening date, headcount or budget — what we have is a confirmed organizational structure, not a finished lineup of new car technology. Not yet, anyway.
The first real test comes fast. The inaugural HMG Tech Talent Forum runs September 17–18, 2026, in San Jose, and the guest list is heavyweight: nine group entities, including Hyundai, Kia, Boston Dynamics, Motional and 42dot. Applications for the global talent program were accepted from April 20 to May 22, and final interviews with shortlisted candidates will happen right at the forum. No bureaucratic pause — selection and decision compressed into almost one moment.
Silicon Valley's role for Hyundai is shifting before our eyes. CRADLE keeps hunting for outside technology and partners, while AVP Silicon Valley takes on something different — building the company's own teams to bring AI into cars, robots and manufacturing systems across the group. Nowhere is this split spelled out as a hard rule, but it's readable between the lines — in how the two units are described and in the logic of the talent program itself.
