Bio-inspired vision company Prophesee, formerly known as Chronocam, has raised $19 million in the initial tranche of a series B financing round.
Led by a new strategic investor from the electronics industry, the round also includes staged investments from Prophesee’s existing investors: 360 Capital Partners, Supernova Invest, iBionext, Intel Capital, Renault Group, and Robert Bosch Venture Capital.
Prophesee’s technology mimics the human eye and brain. It offers extremely fast vision processing – equivalent to up to 100,000 frames per second – a dynamic range of more than 120dB, and power efficiency with operating characteristics of less than 10mW. The technology allows machines to capture scene changes not previously possible in machine vision systems for robotics, industrial automation and automotive.
‘Our event-based approach to vision sensing and processing has resonated well with our customers in the automotive, industrial and IoT sectors, and the technology continues to achieve impressive results in benchmarking and prototyping exercises. This latest round of financing will help us move rapidly from technology development to market deployment,’ said Luca Verre, co-founder and CEO of Prophesee. ‘Having the backing of our original investors, plus a world leader in electronics and consumer devices, further strengthens our strategy and will help Prophesee win the many market opportunities we are seeing.’
The latest funding round builds on the $20 million Prophesee has raised over the past three years, and will allow it to accelerate the development and industrialisation of the company’s technology.
Renault is working with Prophesee to use the bio-inspired vision technology for Renault’s advanced driver assistance systems. Prophesee, as Chronocam, won the 2016 most promising startup at the Inpho Venture Summit investment conference in Bordeaux, France.
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