Algolux Raises $12.8 Million to Build Smarter Autonomous Car Cameras
Algolux has announced a $12.8 million Series A funding round.
The Montreal-based Algolux is a leading provider of machine-learning stacks built for autonomous vision and imaging. The round was led by General Motors Ventures and included Drive Capital, Intact Ventures and a follow-on investment from Real Ventures.
The new funding will go towards advancing and building out Algolux’s tech as well as expanding its footprint on the global market through targeted development activities.
“We are excited to see our innovative approach to autonomous vision and imaging stacks gaining so much traction,” said Felix Heide, co-founder and CTO of Algolux. “Today’s systems are facing extreme challenges in conditions that are actually ubiquitous in the real world and therefore essential for automotive safety.”
“At Algolux, we develop end-to-end vision stacks that eliminate parameters and processing blocks that traditionally have been hand-tuned and often fail in the important corner cases,” said Heide. “By learning these parameters and processing blocks, our technology generalizes across sensor configurations and offers a natural way to design safe fusion systems.”
Algolux focuses on deep perception problems when it comes to autonomous driving and vision. Their tech enables cars to address everyday scenarios like extreme lighting or adverse weather conditions. Deploying Algolux in an autonomous driving solution leads to better mobile imaging, more accurate security video systems and an accelerated time-to-market.
“Safety is the overriding priority for autonomous vehicle development. Complete autonomy will only be realized through a leap in perception and inference performance,” said Jason Nolte, GM Ventures Investment Manager. “Algolux’s unique machine learning applications can accelerate the realization of these performance gains for next-generation perception stacks, and thus accelerate the advancement of safe autonomous transportation.”
Nolte and Mark Kvamme from Drive Capital will join Algolux’s board of directors.
GM Canada recently opened a brand new technical centre in Markham to focus on next-generation active safety, car infotainment systems, and software and controls related to GM’s development of autonomous vehicles. It’s a good bet that Algolux will be working with reps from the new centre as they strive to improve the computer vision for cameras in autonomous vehicles.
Algolux previously raised a $2.6 million funding round back in August 2014.
