BMW, Continental, Knorr-Bremse and VinFast backed the autonomous perception technology developer, which traces its roots to Technion.
Autobrains, an Israel-based developer of autonomous driving technology that traces its roots to Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, has received $101m in a series C round led by Singaporean state-owned investment firm Temasek.
Carmakers BMW and VinFast as well as automotive component producers Continental and Knorr-Bremse also took part.
Founded in 2019 as Cartica AI, Autobrains has developed technology that maps raw real-world data to compressed signatures and identifies concepts and scenarios for optimal decision-making.
The process results in a single representation of space and advanced perception, an understanding of the contextual elements of driving scenarios and a reduction of reliance on labelled data and computing power. Autobrains intends to use the funding to boost international expansion.
The company had previously raised an undisclosed amount of series B funding in September 2019 from Continental; Toyota AI Ventures, the corporate venturing unit of carmaker Toyota; BMW i Ventures, the strategic investment arm of BMW; and equity crowdfunding platform OurCrowd.
Autobrains is an offshoot of artificial intelligence technology developer Cortica, a Technion spinout co-founded in 2007 by former postdoctoral researcher Igal Raichelgauz, who is also Autobrains CEO.
Raichelgauz said: “By reducing the need for manually labelled training data that feed systems which miss or misinterpret the most challenging scenarios, our technology is more agile and on a steeper trajectory than our competitors’ systems.
“With this latest round of funding, we are excited to grow our commercial reach and bring self-learning AI to additional markets.”
– A version of this article first appeared on our sister site, Global Corporate Venturing.
