Israel-based self-driving technology developer Autobrains has closed its series C round at $120m, featuring investors including automotive producers BMW and VinFast as well as car parts producers Continental and Knorr-Bremse.
Singaporean government-owned investment fund Temasek led the round, in which BMW was represented by BMW i Ventures. The company had initially disclosed a $101m series C round in November 2021 featuring the same investors as the latest close.
Founded in 2019 and formerly known as Cartica AI, Autobrains is working on an artificial intelligence (AI) and data-equipped software platform designed for use in autonomous vehicles, helping the advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) identify and assess road objects and traffic situations.
Initially spun out of AI technology group Cortica, which was a Technion spinout co-founded in 2007 by Autobrains chief exeucitve Igal Raichelgauz, who was a postdoctoral researcher at the time.
Continental and BMW i Ventures had already participated in a series B round of undisclosed size in 2019, investing together with equity crowdfunding platform OurCrowd and Toyota AI Ventures, a corporate venturing arm of carmaker Toyota.
Karl-Thomas Neumann, chairman of Autobrains, said: “The immense success of this most recent funding round demonstrates that Autobrains is a key player in leading the future of mobility which will be powered by AI.
“It is invigorating to see the degree in which our self-learning AI solutions to ADAS and autonomous driving are transforming the next generation of mobility to create real automation.”
Thuy Linh Pham, deputy CEO VinFast, added: “Autobrains’ technology holds the promise we have all been looking for to create the paradigm shift in the industry to self-learning AI, bridging the gap to fully autonomous driving.
“Autobrains captured our attention by applying self-learning AI software, as opposed to traditional software that is based on manually labelled data, to make self-driving vehicles adaptive to unprecedented behaviours in real-time. We expect that Autobrains will actualise this ambitious goal into a reality in the near future.”
Image courtesy of Autobrains Technologies Ltd.
