BMW i Ventures announced an investment in Cartica AI, the leading automotive visual intelligence platform developing next generation AI capabilities for the automotive industry while using the computational resources of an average car.
The new funding will be used to launch Cartica’s Autonomous AI platform and scale its global operations.
“Cartica AI introduces a series of important technological advancements for an OEM ranging from low compute requirements and low energy consumption, to a transparent decision-making process of the computer vision-based perception stack. Updates to the system can be included within minutes without the need to re-run vast amounts of training data like neural network-based approaches,” said Kasper Sage, Partner BMW i Ventures. “This is of immense value before a new system release. We believe Cartica will thus play a key role in the development of Autonomous Driving and Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS) by OEMs and Tier 1s, allowing them to design safe and predictable solutions that fulfill the strict requirements of the market.”
Cartica AI is introducing a paradigm-shift to the conventional AI approach of supervised deep learning, which is heavily based on massive amounts of human-labeled data. This labeling process is time-consuming, expensive and unreliable for edge-case scenarios. In contrary to deep-learning, Cartica AI enables un-supervised learning from real-world data, resulting in unprecedented accuracy in edge cases and challenging scenarios. Cartica AI’s platform is based on an already mature technology, following over a decade of R&D and is protected by over 200 patents.
“Our goal is to introduce a novel, yet proven, AI approach to the automotive industry, which will pave the way for a safer and more autonomous transportation,” said Igal Raichelgauz, CEO and Co-founder of Cartica AI. “Our strategy is to build strong partnerships with leading automotive players in order to bring our solution to the high volume automotive market, by the end of next year. Joining forces with these leading players is another substantial validation to our unique technology and business strategy.”
BMW i Ventures, BMW’s EUR 500 million venture capital fund, invests money and resources in startups in the fields of autonomous driving, digital car and automotive cloud, e-mobility, artificial Intelligence and data, industry 4.0, shared and on-demand mobility, customer digital life, and energy services.
BMW i Ventures has already entered into strategic partnerships with innovative providers such as Scoop, Zirx, RiceCell, Chargepoint, Life360, Moovit, JustPark, DSP Concepts, Chargemaster, Zendrive, Rever Moto, STRIVR, Desktop Metal, BUS.com, Proterra, Xometry, Caroobi, GaN Systems, Shift, May Mobility, Blackmore Sensors and Analytics, Vera, Mapillary, Claroty, Graphcore, Tekion and Yellowbrick Data and Recogni. BMW i Ventures invests in all stages from seedto growth companies.
