Prophesee, inventor of the first bio-inspired vision system, today announced it has closed the initial tranche of its Series B financing round, totalling $19 million. Led by a new strategic investor from the electronics industry, the round was also joined by existing investors like 360 Capital Partners, Supernova Invest, iBionext, Intel Capital, Renault Group, and Robert Bosch Venture Capital.
Founded in 2014 in Paris, Prophesee has a patented approach to revolutionizing the next generation of machine vision applications, such as autonomous vehicles, robots, industrial automation and IoT devices. This new technology allows cameras and sensors for the first time to view and analyze infinitely fast and fleeting events, as well as effectively operate in challenging conditions like extreme light contrasts. Prophesee-powered systems also operate at record levels of power efficiency, enabling sensor ubiquity and portability.
The latest round builds on the $20 million Prophesee has raised over the past three years, and will allow the young company to accelerate the development and industrialization of its technology.
At the heart of the Prophesee inventions is a breakthrough technology that mimics the human eye and brain and allows machines to see what was previously invisible to them, making human interactions with them more efficient, more reliable and safer than ever.
Thanks to its extremely fast vision processing (equivalent of up to 100,000 frames per second) capabilities, Prophesee’s bio-inspired technology enables unprecedented performance levels in real-time, allowing machines to capture scene changes not previously possible in machine vision systems for robotics, industrial automation and automotive.
Its high dynamic range of more than 120dB lets systems operate and adapt effectively in a range of challenging and changing lighting conditions. It sets a new standard for power efficiency with operating characteristics of less than 10mW, opening new types of applications and use models for mobile, wearable and remote vision-enabled products.
Luca Verre, co-founder and CEO of Prophesee, stated: “Our event-based approach to vision sensing and processing has resonated well with our customers in the automotive, industrial and IoT sectors, and the technology continues to achieve impressive results in benchmarking and prototyping exercises. This latest round of financing will help us move rapidly from technology development to market deployment.”
Prophesee (formerly Chronocam) was founded within iBionext Startup Studio (Paris) by Ryad Benosman, Bernard Gilly, Christoph Posch and Luca Verre. The quartet brings a strong combination of experience in image sensing neuromorphic computing, VLSI design, entrepreneurship and business development. With local offices in France, Japan and USA, Prohesee today counts 60 engineers and holds more than 20 international patents.