At IAA Mobility 2025 in Munich, Cerence made its pitch for the future of in-car AI: ditch reactive assistants, embrace agentic co-pilots. The company’s latest updates to Cerence xUI™ promise to transform chatty infotainment systems into proactive AI partners that understand context, anticipate needs, and make driving (and even working) smarter and safer.
From Voice Assistant to Agentic Partner
Traditional voice assistants often feel like little more than glorified search bars bolted to dashboards. Cerence is trying to push past that limitation with xUI, a hybrid AI platform built on the company’s CaLLM™ language model family. The tech blends in-house LLMs and SLMs with third-party models, real-time data, and in-vehicle context to orchestrate multiple agents—navigation, entertainment, productivity—into a single seamless experience.
That’s not just an incremental upgrade. As automakers race to meet customer demand for smarter interfaces, they also face the messy reality of hardware fragmentation and supply chain complexity. By leaning into a hardware-agnostic approach with cross-platform compatibility, Cerence is betting it can help OEMs deploy advanced AI faster and cheaper—whether in new cars or retrofitted fleets already on the road.
Edge AI, Without the Wait
One standout at IAA: CaLLM Edge, a small, embedded model designed to keep core functions like voice, touch, and visual AI responsive even without connectivity. The system runs efficiently on diverse hardware, demonstrated in Munich on SiMa.ai’s low-power MLSoC, Modalix.
For drivers, the payoff is less lag and more reliability. For automakers, it’s resilience in a market where cloud dependency isn’t always practical—or welcome.
AI That Sees, Listens, and Understands
Cerence also showcased multi-modal input that allows in-car AI to process voice, touch, and vision simultaneously—even juggling multiple video feeds. That means an assistant that doesn’t just hear you ask for directions but also understands when traffic conditions outside call for rerouting.
Working on the Road—Safer
In collaboration with Microsoft, Cerence is bringing productivity into the cabin with a mobile work agent running on xUI. Tied into Microsoft 365 Copilot, Teams, Outlook, and OneNote, the system offers voice-first access to drafting emails, building meeting agendas, or grabbing morning debriefs—all while keeping hands on the wheel and eyes on the road.
It’s not hard to imagine automakers leaning on this integration as a differentiator, especially as cars increasingly double as mobile offices. Whether regulators are ready for that reality is another question.
The Ecosystem Play
Cerence isn’t trying to do it all alone. Its IAA booth leaned heavily on ecosystem partnerships with MediaTek, Microsoft, NVIDIA, SiMa.ai, and 4screen. These collaborations highlight how AI is becoming the connective tissue of the car industry, enabling new revenue streams like contextual advertising alongside traditional driver assistance.
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