MoreTech Ventures led the funding round, though the amount was undisclosed. Other investors included Volvo Group and Nationwide Insurance, which suggests automakers and insurers alike continue to look for new ways to assess automated driving technology.
“We look for startups that are building the future with technological developments that will transform the transport industry,” said Martin Witt, vice president and head of Volvo Group Venture Capital. “We believe that with Foretellix’s advanced test automation tools and expertise, we can deploy current and future [automated driving systems]. We have the same clear goal to infuse automation and metrics into the validation process.”
In addition, Series A investors 83North, Jump Capital, OurCrowd and NextGear Ventures, all participated in the more recent round.
Foretellix’s simulation platform allows customers to replicate driving scenarios with thousands of variations that would otherwise be impossible or laborious to collect. Binyamini borrows his general approach to simulation and verification from a formative tenure at Intel, where he worked on testing and developing the company’s Pentium chips.
Today, the funding arrives at a time when the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating the pattern of Autopilot-enabled Tesla vehicles crashing into parked emergency vehicles. In other recent developments, a Toyota self-driving test vehicle struck and injured a pedestrian in Japan, prompting fresh questions on the readiness of AVs even for testing on public roads.
