NEW DIVISION FORMALIZES HIVIZ’S TRANSITION TO A SCALABLE, PLATFORM-BASED VEHICLE TECHNOLOGY COMPANY.
HiViz Lighting, Inc. today announced a strategic reorganization with the formation of a new organizational division, reinforcing the company’s evolution from a legacy lighting manufacturer into a full-stack vehicle technology company.
The team is focused on advancing HiViz Lighting’s foundational technology ecosystem. Rather than being tied to individual products, this division is responsible for the shared software, firmware, and systems that enable intelligent vehicle functionality across multiple markets and applications. This structure allows HiViz to advance platform-level technologies while product teams independently focus on delivering market-specific solutions.
“As HiViz continues to grow rapidly, we recognized that our most critical technologies needed to be developed independently from individual products,” said Sam Massa, Chief Executive Officer of HiViz Lighting. “This structure allows us to run parallel efforts, reducing bottlenecks and enabling the company to move faster as we scale.”
At the center of this new division is the HiViz Connect® ecosystem, a distributed embedded technology platform that enables smart vehicle functionality without requiring a central controller, new hardware, custom wiring harnesses, or one-off firmware for each vehicle. HiViz Connect abstracts complexity from the vehicle, allowing intelligence, features, and compliance to be embedded into the system by design, even across uniquely configured vehicles.
The new division will be led by Whitaker McRae, who has been promoted to the Senior Vice President’s role over this operational division. McRae is the principal architect behind the HiViz technology stack and has played a foundational role in the development of the company’s distributed embedded systems. Massa says this role gives him and his team the focus and authority to advance the platform that underpins HiViz’s future, and it represents a significant investment in HiViz’s long-term strategy.
Under McRae’s leadership, this group will be responsible for the shared technology layers that span all HiViz offerings. These include distributed control architectures, protocols, firmware libraries, cloud connectivity, developer SDKs, APIs, documentation, and internal tooling. These technologies apply broadly across business units and markets rather than being tied to any single product line.
A strategic objective of the group is to enable faster and more flexible technology-level integrations and partnerships. These integrations allow the HiViz platform to communicate with other technologies through software and data protocols rather than physical customization. This approach enables collaboration with third-party technology providers and apparatus manufacturers, while HiViz manages the underlying architecture, toolsets, and system integrity.
“Our focus is not on being constrained by hardware,” Massa added. “Separating intelligence from physical form allows HiViz to scale technology across vehicles and markets, and to make that capability available through licensing and partnerships where others want access to a mature, shared feature set.”
This strategic reorganization supports HiViz’s long-term growth objectives, including expansion into new markets, accelerated development cycles, potential acquisitions, and increased enterprise value through scalable technology assets.
“Our mission started with helping first responders see and be seen,” Massa said. “Today, it is about connecting first responders to the world around them. The organization around this new business segment gives us the architectural foundation to do that at scale.”
The formation of this business group reflects HiViz’s broader strategy to grow through parallel execution, allowing dedicated product teams to focus on market-specific solutions while a centralized technology division advances the shared platform that powers the entire business.
