Recogni, the designer of a vision-oriented AI program for autonomous vehicles, has secured US$25m in Series A financing led by GreatPoint Ventures with participation from Toyota AI Ventures, BMW i Ventures, Faurecia, Fluxunit and DNS Capital.
Founded in 2017 and headquartered in San Jose, California, Recogni uses its Vision Cognition Processor to help autonomous vehicles process their surroundings in real time, using minimal power.
“Today, autonomous vehicles have hit the processing efficiency wall and are unable to transition to Level 3 autonomy and beyond,” said Ashwini Choudhary, co-founder and chief business officer, Recogni. “We’re focused on creating high-performance and low-power AI processing to help make autonomous vehicles a reality.
“Our system identifies small objects – like traffic lights – from over 200m (656ft) away in real time. Unlike lidars and radars, Recogni can tell you if the lights are red, yellow or green because it works on imaging data. The Recogni Vision Cognition System uses a diverse set of image sensors to identify significantly smaller objects at a much larger distance compared with competitors’ equipment, while consuming a fraction of power.”