• Innoviz Technologies

  Participated · Equity · Dec 2020

  Innoviz Technologies Ltd. announced it expects to receive $200 million in funding through a private placement. The company entered into a subscription agreement for 20,000,000 common shares at $10 per share for gross proceeds of $200,000,000. The transaction is being led by Antara Capital LP and was raised at a post-money valuation of $1,375,000,000. The board of directors has approved the transaction. The closing is targeted for the first quarter of 2021 on the date of, and immediately following, the consummation of a merger and is subject to regulatory and stockholder approvals and other customary closing conditions. The company has entered into a 180-day lock-up agreement from issuance. Innoviz develops solid-state lidar sensors and bundled perception software aimed at autonomous vehicles and robotaxis. Its flagship product, InnovizOne, is an automotive-grade lidar system the company says can be produced and sold at roughly 90% lower cost than its first-generation system. Innoviz packages perception software with its sensors and partners with OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers such as Magna, HARMAN, HiRain Technologies and Aptiv. The company has secured commercial design wins, notably with BMW for series production starting in 2021. With the new funding, Innoviz plans to scale production, expand manufacturing capacity, and grow in key markets including the U.S., Europe, Japan and China. It also intends to invest in R&D to develop next-generation products and improved software performance. Innoviz Technologies, based in Kfar Saba, Israel and led by co-founder and CEO Omer Keilaf, develops solid-state LiDAR sensing solutions aimed at the mass commercialization of autonomous vehicles. The company leverages proprietary System, MEMS and Detector designs to deliver long-ranging, accurate sensing at cost and size targets for automotive adoption. Its product lineup includes InnovizPro, a development platform for automakers, Tier 1 suppliers and tech companies, and InnovizOne, an automotive-grade LiDAR device targeting levels 3–5 autonomy. InnovizPro was slated to be available in Q1 2018, while samples of InnovizOne were planned to begin shipping in 2019. The company said it will use the new funds to grow its team across R&D, operations, marketing and business development. At the time of the article the Series B had been extended and the company reported total funding of $82M. Innoviz makes solid-state LiDAR sensors designed for greater reliability (no moving parts) and improved sensing across challenging conditions such as bright sunlight. The company offers a development-focused product, InnovizPro, and plans to begin delivering InnovizPro to automakers starting in the first quarter of next year. Its automotive-grade InnovizOne sensor is slated to be available as a manufacturing sample sometime in 2019. Innoviz raised $65 million in a Series B from strategic partners and auto suppliers to help push toward mass production of its LiDAR modules. The funding will also support the company’s computer vision work and formation of new partnerships. Strategic investors Delphi Automotive and Magna International—both positioned to supply automakers with autonomous-driving components—are already working with Innoviz to integrate its technology into OEM systems. Innoviz Technologies develops compact solid-state Lidar sensors aimed at autonomous vehicles. The company says its prototype is working internally and it plans a public demo by the end of this year, with a mass-production-ready product targeted for mid-2018. Innoviz aims for an under-$100 price point at volume by reducing components and expects a package smaller than 5cm x 5cm x 5cm. The company declined to disclose technical details but said it took a different technical approach to the scanning element than competitors such as Quanergy and MIT. Beyond hardware, Innoviz is expanding its team to build complementary software for mapping and localization, object detection and tracking, and sensor fusion. Financially, Innoviz raised $9 million in a Series A round closed in February.

• Neurala

  Led · Seed · Dec 2014

  Neurala offers VIA, a vision-AI software platform built on its Lifelong-DNN (L-DNN) technology to reduce the time, cost and skills required to build and maintain production-quality custom computer-vision solutions. The product is positioned for in-line quality inspection, enabling faster, more accurate and scalable defect detection on manufacturing production lines. Over the last year the company expanded work with system integrators threefold and broadened engagements with OEMs to increase deployment capacity. Neurala launched a European subsidiary in Trieste, Italy to support its growing international footprint while remaining headquartered in Boston, MA. The company says the new capital will be used to evolve VIA for a wider range of applications and accelerate global adoption as manufacturers prioritize automation and Industry 4.0 initiatives. Total invested in Neurala now stands at $26 million. Neurala builds vision AI software focused on industrial and real-world applications, emphasizing edge deployment. Its Lifelong-DNN (L-DNN) technology lowers data requirements and enables continuous learning in the cloud or at the edge. The company helps industrial customers improve quality inspection and monitoring, with deployments across manufacturing, drones, robotics, and smart devices. Neurala’s edge-trained models are designed to extract actionable insights from IIoT sensor and camera data and to be set up by operators without specialized expertise. The company positions its technology as a core enabler of Industry 4.0 initiatives through on-machine, edge AI. Neurala builds the Neurala Brain SDK (marketed as Brains for Bots) to run machine learning locally on resource-constrained devices, enabling incremental learning and on-device updates without continuous network connectivity. The platform is hardware-agnostic, scales from low-end CPUs to high-end GPUs, and integrates with frameworks such as TensorFlow; the SDK supports Linux, Android and iOS. For customers needing custom models, Neurala offers a data ingestion and training service, and it also provides a server-based solution, yielding three complementary business models. The company targets time-sensitive and offline use cases (for example, drones inspecting power lines) and aims to put AI in the hands of toy makers, drone builders and IoT engineers. Early customers include Teal Drones, and Motorola Solutions is noted as an early customer; the founding team and leadership (CEO Massimiliano Versace) have cognitive and neural systems Ph.D.s from Boston University. The article does not disclose revenue or other operating metrics. Neurala builds deep-learning software that enables robots to learn and be instructed by people rather than be explicitly programmed. Its core technology applies artificial neural networks (ANNs) running on GPUs, and the company holds a fundamental patent for that approach. Led by CEO and co-founder Massamiliano Versace, Neurala has secured contracts with NASA and the U.S. Air Force Research Labs to develop deep learning controllers. Use cases cited include autonomous exploration of Mars-like environments, collision avoidance for unmanned aircraft, and persistent surveillance. The company will use the recently raised seed funds to develop practical commercial applications for both flying and ground-based robots that utilize its learning software. Neurala is based in Boston, MA.

No current team members are available.