Mayfield Fund, Continental, Robert Bosch Venture Capital, and Existing Investors Join WRVI Capital in Financing Developer of Highest-Performing Power-Efficient Perception Processing Technologies for Autonomous Vehicles
San Jose, California, USA and Munich, Germany:February17, 2021—Recogni Inc., the developers of an AI vision cognition system for autonomous vehicles, today announced $48.9 million in a Series B financing round, led by WRVI Capital, a prominent global technology investor. The proceeds will help Recogni bring its perception platform to market and expand its engineering and go-to-market teams.
In addition to WRVI Capital, new investors Mayfield Fund, Continental, and Robert Bosch Venture Capital joined existing investors GreatPoint Ventures, Toyota AI Ventures, BMWi Ventures, Fluxunit – OSRAM Ventures, and DNS Capital in the current financing round.
Recogni’s AI-powered vision cognition module (VCM) will address the challenges of autonomous vehicle design and deployment. Applying innovations in artificial intelligence, application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs),and system software, the VCM will deliver groundbreaking performance at ultra-low power consumption, enabling high-resolution and high-frame-rate image processing from multiple cameras concurrently in realtime.
“As Silicon Valley-based deep technology investors, we understand the impact that fundamental breakthroughs in silicon architecture, embedded software, AI algorithms, and power efficiency can have on autonomous vehicle development,” said Sriram Viswanathan, Founding Managing Partner of WRVI Capital. “We were attracted to Recogni’s team, the innovations across multiple domains, and the potential to massively accelerate the journey to fully autonomous transportation. We are convinced theirinnovations have the potential to make them the leader in this market segment.”
“This investment is a strong endorsement of Recogni’s vision from venture and industry leaders. We are moving along our journeyof solving the challenge of perception processing and power efficiency, by building the world’s highest-performing AI inference system at the lowest energy consumption,” said RK Anand, Recogni’s Chief Executive Officer.
“As a people-first investor, it always begins with the team,” said Navin Chaddha, Managing Director, Mayfield. “I first met RK seven years ago. I have always been impressed by him and we have kept in touch since then. When you combine that with our belief in the renaissance of silicon, it was obvious that Recogni’s approach to AI edge inference will help develop new generations of safe, power-efficient, self-driving vehicles.We look forward to partnering with them as they help put silicon back into Silicon Valley.”
Tier1 suppliers have continuously strengthened their AD technology expertise for years. “Continental has a strong focus on developing automated and autonomous vehicle technologies. Therefore, investing in Recogni perfectly supports our high-performance computing strategy for autonomous vehicle functions,” said Rouven Spinner, Investment Partner at Continental. “Our shared focus and complementary expertise enable us to see the value of Recogni’s vision cognition technology. We are excited to work with the Recogni team on next-generation perception technologies.”
“RBVC invests in innovative startups that can change the course of an emerging market,” said Luis Llovera, Managing Director at Robert Bosch Venture Capital. “The outstanding performance of Recogni’s solution convinced us to invest. Their AI-powered vision platform will enable Tier1s and OEMs to accelerate the transition from just safety features to full autonomy.”
“As the first investor in Recogni, we are thrilled to welcome WRVI, Mayfield, Continental, and RBVC to the Recogni family and together with our participation in this round it validates our conviction that the vision of safe, energy-efficient autonomous Level-4 and Level-5 vehicles is coming to fruition,” said Ashok Krishnamurthi, Managing Partner at GreatPoint Ventures.
