This is the age of AI ( Artificial Intelligence ). One area where AI is creating real disruption is the Automobile space. AI powered Self-driving is the talk of the town. Lets take a look at the top 10 interesting startups working in the Autonomous Self-driving vehicle space.
Drive.ai
This is one of the most talked about startup in the Autonomous Self-driving space. Drive.ai initially raised around $12 Million in funding and is founded by Sameep Tandon. Adding to it recently the company raised another $50 Million in funding. The founders of the startup has good expertise in the Deep learning vertical and are trying to solve a lot of Driver-less car issues via. extreme Machine learning. The startup has an ambitious goal of connecting all the dots in the self-driving vehicle space ( Sensors, Camera, Human to Car communication, Car to car communication etc. ) via. deep learning techniques.
Recently Sameep Tandon quoted saying: “What we are building at Drive.ai is the brains for self-driving cars, We think self-driving cars are going to make roads safer, give us our time back, and re-imagine our cities.”
Drive.ai also creates the Roof top kits that can turn any existing vehicles into Self-driving Autonomous vehicles. The startup has recently bought in Andrew Ng ( who headed the AI divisions in Baidu and Google ).
The startup which has been in stealth mode for so long has just come out to the public to show case its capabilities. Still there is not much information mentioned on their website or their press releases. We will keep this post updated on more info.
Smart Car Tech
While a lot many Self-driving Autonomous vehicle startups concentrate on solving or improving the vehicles itself, Smart Car tech works on building an AI powered ‘Car Rental Software’ for Car Rental businesses. Based out of Bangalore India, the startup is completely Bootstrapped with many Car Rental companies around the world already using their software suite.
One of the areas which is going to be deeply impacted by the Driver-less cars is the Car Rental Space. Existing companies like AVIS, HERTZ and thousands of Small, Medium vehicle rental companies run of software and mobile apps using which they manage their fleet, Take bookings, payment etc,. When Driver-less vehicle’s come into picture, they would surely need to upgrade their existing software to ones that support Driver-less cars. This is where Smart Car Tech is focusing on.
Apart form creating Car Rental Software for these businesses, the startup also is working on technologies to easily implement Smart contracts for Automobile insurance and accident management algorithms for the Self-driving vehicles era.
nuTonomy
nuTonomy is a hot startup focused primarily on supplying Autonomous Self-driving technology and mobile robots to businesses. The Startup is based out of Singapore and US. Doug Parker is the COO of the startup that has raised near $20 Million. Nutonomy is considered the official partner of the Singapore government for all Self Driving related research and progress in the region. The company has landed an impressive deal with the ride-hailing business “Grab” to supply autonomous self-driving vehicles and related technology.
Note: GRAB Taxi has recently raised near $750 Million in funding.
In a statement Mr Karl Iagnemma, the CEO of Nutonomy said, “Partnering with Grab to expand our public trial in Singapore will yield valuable feedback and consumer insights as nuTonomy readies our on-demand self-driving car service for commercial launch in 2018”
Nutonomy is currently involved in testing its fleet of self-driving vehicles at 1 North district of Singapore. The company has plans to launch at-least 1000 such driver-less vehicles by 2018. Nutonomy has fitted 6 cars( Renault Zoe, Mitsubishi i-MiEV ) with the Autonomous driving kits to test drive them on road.
Embark
This is an interesting Autonomous Self-driving startup particularly focused on the Logistics space. As they have rightly mentioned on the site: While most of the companies, startups and billions are spent on the passenger vehicles ie. Cars, Van, GPs etc. Embark focuses on commercial trucking.
This is interesting owing to the fact that UBER is also bullish on the driver-less commercial trucking vertical with its acquisition of OTTO & Google Waymo’s latest interest in Self-driving Trucks.
Embark is a startup spun off from Y-Combinator and is recently funded with $4.5 Million dollars, by Maven ventures ( YC & Maven were also the investors the Cruise which was a Billion dollar exit ). Founded by Michael Skupien and Alex Rodrigues, the team is backed by engineers with steep expertise in Robotics, Machine Learning, AI etc.
Autonomous Self-Driving Trucks can reduce a lot of human error due to stress, long hauls, drowsiness etc,. It is a big and incredible market to address 🙂
Amber Mobility
An interesting Netherlands based startup that works on creating the Autonomous Self-Driving vehicles as well as a car sharing platform that dispenses Driver-less cars on-demand. The Dutch government is very bullish on promoting and implementing Driver-less Autonomous vehicles by 2019.
Amber is a startup founded by Steven Nelemans and Joep Sloot. The company has already been testing their Self-Driving BMW i3 cars for sometime now and they also have ABN AMRO bank already using their mobility platform.Amber has also managed to design its own self driving Autonomous car and its called the Amber one ( a futuristic looking model that is light weight, can be used to travel long ranges, customizable and has a long life span.
Amber mobility plans to offer its services as an on-demand cab dispatch service for employees of businesses & as a personal on-demand car for private users.