Civil Maps, a startup working on autonomous car mapping technology, has raised $6.6m in a seed round that will fund product development.
Automotive manufacturer Ford Motor Company took part in a $6.6m seed round for Civil Maps, a US-based developer of 3D mapping technology for autonomous vehicles, on Friday.
The round was led by venture capital fund and accelerator Motus Ventures and also featured VC firms Wicklow Capital and AME Cloud Ventures, and StartX, the technology transfer accelerator for Stanford University.
Civil Maps has built artificial intelligence software that combines raw 3D data from lidar, cameras and other sensors on board autonomous vehicles to create machine-readable maps that can be used by the vehicles.
The startup claims the technology produces more actionable data than current systems despite needing a fraction of the data storage, making it cheaper at the same time. It plans to invest the cash in product development, and to begin deploying it with the help of carmakers and technology manufacturers.
Sravan Puttagunta, chief executive of Civil Maps, said: “Civil Maps’ scalable map generation process enables fully autonomous vehicles to drive like humans do – identifying on-road and off-road features even when they might be missing, deteriorated or hidden from view and letting a car know what it can expect along its route.
“We are honoured to work with Ford and the rest of our investor team to pave the way for fully autonomous vehicles at continental scale.”
– This article first appeared on our sister site Global Corporate Venturing.
