Autonomous vehicles have seen a decrease in nine-figure acquisitions and funding offers since a few years ago. However, technology pillars within the automated vehicle industry continue to pique the interests of strategic investors. Woven Capital, Toyota’s growth fund, is one such example, having invested in Israeli startup Foretellix.
Foretellix specializes in providing companies the tools to verify autonomous vehicle technology at various levels. This is necessary for safety validation so they can eventually commercialize and scale their automated vehicles, ranging from Level 2 advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) to Level 4 autonomous technology. 83North led the first closing of Foretellix’s $43 million Series C followed by Woven Capital, Nvidia and Atrofin VC.
CEO Ziv Binyamini will use the funds to further invest in their technology and expand their sales teams. Said teams are currently spread across Israel, California, Detroit, Germany, Sweden, China and Japan. Foretellix offers two core technologies: a scenario generation and big data analytics software. This allows their customers to test their systems in different scenarios and analyze the results.
Their biggest customers include Daimler Trucks and Volvo Group. This is due to their technology being complementary to products from Nvidia via their Drive SIM end-to-end simulation platform. Betty Bryant, Principal at Woven Capital, cites that Foretellix stands out as it provides “menu of options” and targets specific parts of a stack rather than a full-stack solution.
Foretellix provides safety validation and verification essential to bring autonomous vehicle technology to the commercial market. With the investments they’ve received, they will now concentrate on increasing their sale teams in order to expand into more geographies.
