Israel-based vehicle assistance radar technology developer Arbe closed a $32m series B round yesterday featuring BAIC Capital, the corporate venturing arm of automotive manufacturing group Beijing Automotive Industry.
The round included AI Alliance, the investment vehicle formed by telecommunications firm SK Telecom, carmaker Hyundai, artificial intelligence equipment provider Element AI and Hanwha Asset Management, which is owned by conglomerate Hanwha.
Catalyst CEL, Canaan Partners Israel, iAngels, 360 Capital Partners, OG Tech Ventures and OurCrowd filled out the round.
Founded in 2015, Arbe is developing radar-driven processing chips for manufacturers of autonomous vehicles and advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS).
The technology captures the elevation and azimuth orientation of objects from the vehicle and can achieve further clarity with artificial intelligence-powered processing and simultaneous localisation and mapping. The series B cash will go to increasing headcount.
Arbe has now raised approximately $54m in funding, including $10m in a July 2018 round led by 360 Capital Partners that included Maniv Mobility, Canaan Partners Israel, iAngels, OurCrowd, OG Tech Ventures and Taya Ventures.
The latter five had provided $9m for the company in November 2017, adding to $2.5m of seed capital from unnamed investors seven months earlier.