Thursday, September 07, 2017

Automotive LiDAR Companies Raise $216M in One Month

Recently, automotive LiDAR startups attract a lot of VC money:

LeddarTech announces a combined investment of US$101m led by Osram and including Delphi, Magneti Marelli and Integrated Device Technology as strategic investors, as well as Fonds de solidarité FTQ. This round of funding will allow LeddarTech to enhance its ASIC development efforts, expand its R&D team, and accelerate ongoing LiDAR development programs with select Tier-1 automotive customers for rapid market deployment.

We are thrilled to welcome such an influential group of companies as strategic investors, with whom we share a common goal of making mobility safer and more efficient,” stated Charles Boulanger, LeddarTech’s CEO. “Their strong endorsement is a testament to the maturity of the Leddar technology and the credibility of our product roadmap to support the ongoing development of autonomous driving. This positions LeddarTech as the definitive reference in solid-state LiDAR and validates our Tier-1 partnership business model to rapidly deploy LiDARs on a commercial scale in automotive applications. We believe this announcement represents a major stepping stone towards achieving market-share leadership in the multibillion-dollar automotive LiDAR market by 2020.


PRNewswire: Innoviz has raised $65m in Series B funding as its LiDAR moves into mass production. Delphi Automotive PLC and Magna International participated in the round, along with additional new investors including 360 Capital Partners, Glory Ventures, Naver and others. All Series A investors, including Zohar Zisapel, Vertex Venture Capital, Magma Venture Partners, Amiti Ventures and Delek Motors, participated in this round. A second closing of this round is expected to be announced soon, introducing additional strategic partners.

"As the autonomous driving market matures, Innoviz has clearly established itself among industry leaders not only as the best-in-class LiDAR solution but also as an integral part of the overall autonomous vehicle stack," said Omer Keilaf, Co-founder and CEO of Innoviz. "Today's financing from strategic partners such as Magna and Delphi demonstrates their support for Innoviz as the industry's leading option for high-performing LiDAR and is further proof that we have moved into the next phase of our growth. Given both Magna's and Delphi's unwavering commitment to high performance and high safety standards, investing in and partnering with Innoviz is a natural choice. With their joint efforts, we will be able to scale more quickly and put autonomous driving technology on the road much faster."

Innoviz technology that leverages the company's proprietary System, MEMS and Detector designs to give autonomous vehicles sensing capabilities even in challenging environments such as bright direct sunlight, varying weather conditions and multi-LiDAR environments.



Oryx Vision announces a $50m Series B funding round. Third Point Ventures and WRV led the round, which was joined by Union Tech Ventures, and existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Maniv Mobility and Trucks VC. A mere 15 months after its first funding round, this fundraise brings the total investment in Oryx to $67M.

Oryx will use the new funds to accelerate its development activities and to intensify its commercial engagements with car OEMs, tier-1 supplier and technology players. Having demonstrated the unique capabilities of its technology over the past year, the company expects to ship units for car-mounted testing in the second half of 2018.

Oryx is building the first solution that will meet all the key requirements of automotive LiDARS – high performance, car durability and low price – without a tradeoff. We are delighted to receive a vote of confidence in our vision from such sophisticated investors, and to have the resources to bring this technology to market quickly and at the highest quality,” says Rani Wellingstein, Oryx co-founder and CEO.

From Oryx Vision presentation:

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