You are Camille Vasseur, Chief Technology Officer of Aurelis Mobility Systems in Grenoble. The board has given you €220 million over three years to reshape the company's technology base, and your largest customer will pick a supplier for its next platform in nine months. Before you spend a euro, you must tell the R&D committee which two domains get the money first.
The situation
It is March 2026. Aurelis makes electric-drivetrain and power-electronics components for European carmakers: €1.9 billion in revenue, a 9% EBIT margin and 6,400 people across Grenoble, Stuttgart, Eindhoven and a plant in Pilsen. It spends €135 million a year on R&D, with about 900 engineers and 480 patent families. You joined in 2001 as a motor-design engineer, ran the electric-machines division from 2014 and have been CTO since 2020.
71% of those patents sit in two domains, electric machines and thermal management, whose unit prices are falling 6–8% a year. In power semiconductors and embedded control software Aurelis holds under 9% of its patents and licenses most of its core IP from three outside suppliers. Around it in Grenoble sit a microelectronics institute, two universities and a cluster of battery and chip start-ups the company has mostly left unused.
Halberg Automotive Group, 22% of revenue, has warned you: its next platform needs an integrated power-electronics-and-software module, it will choose a supplier in nine months, and today Aurelis cannot build one. At stake is about €410 million of revenue over the platform's life. Building those capabilities in-house would take four to five years. On the table are an Eindhoven start-up for sale at €140 million, a software licensing and co-development deal at €35 million, and a joint lab with the institute at €18 million over three years. The €220 million will not cover everything.
The board's review fits in one sentence: Aurelis's competitive advantage "is migrating to technologies we do not own." The engineers you promoted in your old division are waiting to see what you name first.