Oculii raises $55 million for its AI-powered radar software

Oculii, a company that develops radars for autonomous systems, has secured $55 million in a funding round led by Catapult Ventures and Conductive Ventures, bringing its valuation to $75 million.

The Series B funding round also saw participation from Taiwania Capital, Susquehanna Investment Group (SIG), HELLA Ventures, PHI-Zoyi Capital, R7 Partners, VectoIQ, ACVC Partners, Mesh Ventures, SV Tech Ventures, Schox Ventures, and Signature Bank.

The new funding follows the launch of Oculii's two high-resolution radars, EAGLE and FALCON.

EAGLE and FALCON are built on Oculii’s proprietary software Virtual Aperture Imaging (VAI). Oculii’s artificial-intelligence-powered VAI platform can enhance the angular resolution of any radar by up to 100 times.

According to Oculii, the improved resolution and sensitivity “unlocks the potential of low-cost, mass-manufacturable, market-proven commercial radars, enabling all-weather perception with less than 1° joint horizontal and elevation spatial resolution up to 350 meters around a full 360° field of view.”

Hardware-independent and modular, VAI helps improve the performance of sophisticated driver assistance systems all the way to fully autonomous vehicles.

“Over the past 20 years, autonomous systems have been waiting for high resolution, weather resilient, and low-cost sensors to help enable a new level of automation,” said Darren Liccardo, managing director of Catapult Ventures.

“Finally, the industry has a scalable solution as Oculii’s Virtual Aperture Imaging (VAI) technology delivers on these metrics for both near-term ADAS features and longer-term self-driving vehicles.”

VAI from Oculii also includes support for deep sensor fusion. High-resolution point cloud data from Oculii can be fused with real-time light detection and ranging (LiDAR) and camera data at the raw detection level. This way, radar systems can employ all sensors to their best advantage, regardless of weather conditions or circumstances.

“Our vision is to make radar a vital component of any autonomy solution, leveraging its inherent strengths with unparalleled resolution, and the market is responding,” said Oculii CEO and co-founder Steven Hong.

“We are working with 14 of the top 20 Tier 1/Tier 2 suppliers and have commercial development contracts with the largest OEM and AV companies in North America, Europe, and Asia. This new round of financing will accelerate Oculii’s growth as the leading AI software radar solution on the market. Oculii will continue to execute on commercial opportunities with automotive, robotic, and AV companies while scaling its teams and customer base globally.”