Autobrains, a Israel-based start-up formerly called Cartica AI, has closed a $120 million Series C funding round that will help the company advance its AI-based self-learning technology for advanced driving assisted systems and autonomous driving.
The funding news comes the same week as Intel’s Mobileye unit, also based in Israel, filed for a U.S. stock market IPO, from which it could raise $50 billion. The IPO filing comes after reports of its likelihood emerged late last year. Intel would retain a majority stake in Mobileye following the IPO.
A TechCrunch report noted that Autobrains views Mobileye as its biggest competition. The Autobrains funding also follows the January announcement from Wayve, another autonomous driving start-up, stating that it had raised $200 million from Microsoft, Virgin and others.
This week’s Autobrains announcement represents a final $19 million of investment added to the $101 million in Series C investment that the company revealed last November. The round was led by Singapore-based investment company Temasek together with both existing partners Continental and BMW i Ventures, as well as new participants Knorr-Bremse AG and VinFast.
“Autobrains is delivering the solution to the challenge that has eluded competitors: solving the 1% margin of error in autonomous driving,” a statement from the company said. It later added, “Current market solutions are unable to cover unpredictable edge-cases without more complex, self-learning-based algorithms - these are essential push factors in order to truly transform the automotive industry.”
The company’s technology essentially allows vehicle systems to learn in a way similar to how human brains learn, and uses an open AI system that can be tailored to each vehicle partner’s specifications. Autobrains also claimed it requires 10x less computing power “than existing systems, lower energy consumption and reduced cost of up to 40%.”