Radar startups review 2018
This article is outdated, please refer to https://medium.com/frontier-tech-review/radar-startups-review-e5e171ed6e20 for an updated one.
A little over a year ago I mentioned that automotive radar market is on the rise and it is indeed. The number of startups has nearly doubled last year and they raised about 180M, which is greater than has ever been raised in the past. It is a good sign to see YCombinator and Khosla Ventures among those interested in radars, but more importantly, investor’s list now includes automotive Tier-1 brands. This indicates that the transition from a technology demo to mass-market for a radar startup may be simplified.
I could name a few more reasons for this positive trend to continue. First, the automotive industry is still an enormously huge one, almost 100M automobiles (including trucks) sold annually resulted in more than 1,500B (yes, one point five trillion dollars) turnover, which is greater than electronics or smartphone industries. Thus, it is not surprising that sensors, being one of the key technology in starting transformation to self-driving vehicles, get a significant portion of attention.
Second, recently radars were a bit under the radar, venture funds prefer to put their money into self-driving technology in general (remember billion-dollar Argo.ai and Cruise deals) or lidars as the most promising type of sensor. But while lidars seem to progress slower than expected (we still do not have a hundred dollar solid state lidar), nowadays radars are already inexpensive and widely used. With any technological breakthrough in the nearest future (which is likely to be the case), the automotive industry will be provided with affordable high-res imaging radars, much more robust and versatile, albeit with lower angular resolution. And, last but not least, they would need less computing power than lidars, which, as Wired recently mentioned is a crucial spec for electric vehicles.
Third, radars are notable for their module construction which means it is possible to bring together some complementing technologies and the final radar will benefit from each of them. For example, we may find a few major trends in the industry: custom SoC radars, antenna technologies (digital and analog beamforming, MIMO), core low-level functionality (SAR etc), high-level processing (imaging, classification) and there is no company that develops everything by itself. Although, soon you may get some technologies and make new and better radar. It might be a powerful driver of M&A deals in the future.
But, the future is future — and what is now?
Arbe Robotics
Israel, Tel Aviv, founded 2015, 23M raised*
* — here and further as mentioned in Crunchbase.
Arbe Robotics (AR) recently became a newsmaker raising two 10M rounds less than in a year, securing more than 22M so far. According to the news, AR put some money into licensing IP from silicon companies like Synopsys (ASIL B and D ready SoC parts architecture) and Arteris. Globalfoundries’ 22FDX 22 nm process was chosen as a planar transistor platform as well. The company will also spend some on its Chinese office in Shanghai.
So Arbe Robotics is probably heading the another notable Israel company, Mobileye, way. Recall that Mobileye is developing its own chips as well as software processing, while the rivals are focused on software processing using existing hardware solutions from any of the major brands. Arbe will need even more money to finish the design or start the production, but expected benefits worth it.
Arbe does not pay much attention to the details of their processing, but the idea is likely not changed. The company claims 1-degree angular resolution with a 100-degree aperture at up to 300 m range. A synthetic aperture is also implemented.
As rumored, AR’s radar may be priced at $100–200 depending on the configuration, pretty small amount for a high-res radar.
Artsys360
Israel, Holon, founded 2013, 4M raised
ARTsys360 is continuously moving forward with additional 800K raised early 2017. Their 360-degree radar sensor’s applications are a physical intrusion, in particular, drone detection. A solid-state construction made possible by using special antenna and math. The company provides one with a whole package from radar units to software, which is capable of plotting the data onto the map.
ARTsys360 also is working on an automotive sensor, which is mentioned to have sensor fusion of 360-degree radar and 3 cameras and to be placed on the vehicle’s roof.
Echodyne
USA, Bellevue WA, founded 2014, 44M raised
Last year Echodyne successfully topped up their wallet with 29M from a group of investors including Bill Gates. The company uses their proprietary MESA technology to make an affordable alternative to a phased-array antenna in 24 GHz range. The specs of the MESA-SSR unit are disclosed and the radar shows pretty good performance when it comes to distance and resolution, but with certain limitations caused by the nature of scanning (1 Hz refresh rate) and probable high output power. It is OK for surveillance but may cause issues entering the automotive market. But military and surveillance markets look big enough for the company.
Ghostwave
USA, Columbus OH, founded 2016
GhostWave considered being an Ohio State University spin-off company bringing to life OSU’s developments in eliminating mutual radar interference. The team of three engineers successfully went through several startup contests including Automobility LA, which names GhostWave among top three startups. No information about any money raised is given, but according to recent news, the company is leading relevant UAV sensors research in Ohio backed by around a million dollars.
Lunewave
USA, Tucson AZ, founded 2017
Lunewave is an Urban-X third cohort alumni, which develops their special Luneburg lens 3D antenna for radars and other HF applications like communications. The core idea is to make an affordable antenna that may be 3d-printed and, as an example, can help in making a 360-degree 300-meters range radar. The technology is shown in the prototype, the amount of money raised is undisclosed, but the team should have had at least a 100K round from Urban-X.
Metawave
USA, Palo Alto CA, founded 2017, 17M raised
Metawave’s core technology is utilizing PARC’s (Palo Alto Research Center) developments in metamaterials for building electronically scanning antenna. The idea of scanning is widely used for so-called digital beamforming, which usually helps to drastically increase the angular resolution of a radar by making the radar slower and more complex. As mentioned, Metawave knows how to get rid of the problems making a fast and affordable scanning radar with their analog beamforming approach. Further processing including imaging and classification is done by AI-powered software and the unit implementing the approach is called WARLORD after W-band Advanced Radar for Long-Range Object Recognition and Detection (by W-band we speak about 77 GHz range).
Metawave is heavily backed either by venture funds and automotive tier-1 players like Toyota and Hyundai with two rounds of 7M and 10M less than in a year.
Oculii
USA, Dayton OH, founded 2013, 14M raised
Last year Oculii among others raised an 11M round for their 4D high-res imaging radar. Not much said about their approach except a couple awesome pictures on their website showing the visualization of radar data. As in 2017, their unit (at least the one rendered for the website) looks like having either radar and camera in one case. But, now the radar is a 77 GHz one instead of old-fashioned 24 GHz.
According to the news, Omniradar spent time bringing their 60 Ghz chip family RIC60 to production. As said, commercial samples should be available in Q3 2018, and mass-production may start in Q4 2018. The target applications are ones you imply for radars: automotive, presence detection, level meters and on.
Omniradar
Netherlands, Eindhoven, founded 2017, 3,4M raised
The idea to use 60 GHz range is promising as Omniradar claims there is a 7 GHz bandwidth available from 57 to 64 GHz (what is even bigger than in popular 77 GHz range) for best distance resolution ever. But, it is still not clear, how it gets along with the regulations.
Oryx
Israel, Petah Tikva, founded 2009, 67M raised
Last year I called Oryx a radar company since they described their solution as some kind of radar-to-lidar technology that brings radar and lidar benefits together. But, now Oryx claims it makes lidars, and, maybe, it is either fair and successful, lest making the company not relevant for the current review.
Its series B round of 50M says Oryx is doing the thing but no news about any customers are given.
Uhnder
USA, Austin TX, founded 2015
Radar startup Uhnder was literally under radars till 2018, when it came out with a deal with one of the Tier-1 automotive suppliers, Magna. Not much said about Uhnder’s technology, but according to their only demo video, the radar should operate in 77 GHz range, has MIMO (thus having several TX and RX channels for better angle estimation) and named Magna Icon radar. The company already has a number of patents, describing the idea of interference cancellation and other features claimed.
Vayyar
Israel, Yehud, founded 2011, 79M raised
Vayyar is another well-funded radar startup, backed by 45M Series C round late 2017. Vayyar’s 3D imaging technology might be used in automotive, and the company’s offering a test package for it, but we did not hear a word about any partnerships. The applications may be limited by the fact that Vayyar uses UWB radars (or at least had used in the past), which provides one with precise data but prohibited for ADAS due to frequency regulations.
More likely that currently the company is focused on literally seeing through walls, their affordable multichannel (72TX/72RX, what is the biggest amount ever) chip helps detecting objects and people behind obstacles. The latter task perfectly fits defensive market needs and is probably already used by Israel Defense Forces, what is, of course, a very good news for the investors and may have forced them to put 45M mentioned above.
Zendar
USA, Berkeley CA, founded 2017, 4,3M raised
Zendar is a YCombinator summer 2017 graduate founded by former Nokia and HERE maps researchers to developing a high res 4D imaging radar. As a common radar, this one is capable of seeing through any weather conditions, but no further details shared.
Don’t hesitate to contact me via koshurinov@gmail.com
