US-based precise positioning technology developer Swift Navigation has obtained $50m in a series C round featuring KDDI Open Innovation Fund, an investment vehicle for telecommunications firm KDDI.
New Enterprise Associates (NEA) led the round, while Eclipse Ventures and Epiq Capital Group also contributed funds.
Founded in 2012, Swift Navigation markets a suite of centimetre-accurate global positioning system technologies for autonomous vehicles and applications, including hardware-agnostic cloud-based software and receivers.
The latest cash injection will enable Swift to drive international expansion efforts and scale customer deployments of its technology. The company has now raised $97.6m in funding altogether, it said.
Swift raised $34m in a series B round led by NEA in 2017, with participation from First Round Capital and Eclipse Ventures. The latter had led an $11m series A round in 2015, when mobile chipmaker Qualcomm’s investment arm Qualcomm Ventures also invested.
NEA, First Round, Promus Ventures, Felicis Ventures, Fall Line Capital and Lemnos Labs also took part in the series A round.
Qualcomm Ventures made its first investment in Swift in 2014 when it participated in a $2.6m seed round that was led by First Round also featured Felicis Ventures, Fall Line Capital, Lemnos Labs, VegasTechFund and angel investor Kal Vepuri.
