Renesas completes acquisition of Irida Labs to expand vision AI software capabilities
Renesas Electronics has announced that a subsidiary of Renesas has completed the acquisition of Irida Labs, a Greece-based company specialising in embedded software for AI-powered visual perception systems. The acquisition strengthens Renesas’ edge AI embedded processing offerings, a key secular growth area for Renesas. It also enables system-level solutions that integrate physical AI and software to power camera and machine vision systems across industrial, robotics, smart city, IoT, agricultural and healthcare markets. As part of Renesas’ Digitalisation strategy, Irida Labs’ software and tools will be integrated into Renesas 365, a newly released platform that unifies electronics system development from discovery to development and lifecycle management.
While the demand for intelligent systems at the edge continues to soar across industries, developers must often overcome growing complexity of AI system development. This includes the integration of power-constraint embedded processors and software, training and deploying AI models and addressing latency and security risks associated with data transmission. Vision AI software plays a critical role in interpreting and processing visual data from cameras and sensors widely used in industrial inspection, robotics guidance, in-cabin automotive sensing, traffic and infrastructure monitoring, smart retail analytics and safety and security systems.
The addition of Irida Labs into Renesas’ product portfolio addresses these emerging challenges. By combining Renesas’ AI-enabled RA microcontrollers (MCUs) and RZ microprocessors (MPUs) with Irida Labs’s comprehensive tool suite and lightweight Vision AI software, Renesas can now deliver high-performance, power-efficient edge AI solutions that are ready for deployment. Together, these capabilities reinforce Renesas’ progress toward fully integrated Vision AI system solutions.
“This acquisition accelerates our efforts to simplify how intelligence is designed and deployed at the edge,” said Gaurang Shah, Vice President and General Manager, Embedded Processing Product Group. “With Irida Labs’ Vision AI tools, software and highly competent AI engineers now part of Renesas, our solution brings together AI perception, embedded processing, development tools and system integration to significantly reduce the learning curve for developers. As a result, they can rapidly develop, train and deploy edge AI systems without deep AI knowledge.”
Vassilis Tsagaris, CEO & Co-Founder of Irida Labs, added, “The joining of Irida Labs into Renesas marks an important milestone in our edge vision AI journey. By combining Irida Labs’ edge Vision AI expertise and our PerCV.ai software with Renesas hardware and global ecosystem, we open up exciting new opportunities to deliver meaningful impact on edge AI worldwide. I am proud of what the team has built, and genuinely excited to take it forward together with Renesas, turning our shared vision into reality.”
Prior to the acquisition, Renesas and Irida Labs collaborated as partners to develop solutions combining Irida Labs’ PerCV.ai software with Renesas’ RA and RZ devices. Bringing these capabilities in-house enables Renesas to deliver more tightly integrated solutions quickly. Renesas also plans to integrate Irida Labs’ software and tools into its newly introduced intelligent, open cloud-based development platform, Renesas 365. At the general availability launch in March 2026, the Renesas 365 platform incorporated Renesas’ RA MCUs, software and toolchain, with additional capabilities to be added over time. The addition of Irida Lab’ software and tools will provide customers with a seamless, end-to-end development experience for Vision AI and deep-learning applications.
