Software company Neurala has closed a USD14 million series A funding round led by Pelion Ventures.
The funding round included participation from Sherpa Capital, Motorola Ventures, 360 Capital Partners, Draper Associates Investments, and Idinvest Partners through its Electranova Capital II Fund and in partnership with Ecomobility Ventures.
Draper Associates also provided the seed funding.
“The Neurala Brain works more like the human brain than any other deep learning neural network solution out there,” says Massimiliano Versace, co-founder and CEO of Neurala. “The rigors and demands of building bio-inspired brainpower for space exploration are now benefitting the most exciting innovations here on earth. But our big differentiation is that our ‘brains’ can think on their own, learn and act instantaneously. This is essential for applications like self-driving cars, where you can’t rely on network access. And it’s an endearing capability when built into dolls that recognise their young owners by sight and give them a smile.”
Neurala’s current customers include Motorola Solutions, Ford Motor Company, Teal Drones, Parrot and Flex. Previous engagements with technology leaders such as NASA and the US Air Force provided a solid financial foundation upon which the Series A funding will now build. Neurala will use the capital to accelerate servicing of its rapidly increasing customer demand, as well as to revolutionise additional application areas by adding built-in intelligence.
“Almost every application on earth can benefit from becoming smarter,” says Tim Draper of Draper Associates. “Neurala is the only platform that enables products to see and react in their worlds, with fast, local, real-time learning. It’s already driving innovative new intelligent hardware applications even as it makes current ones more efficient, with greater financial feasibility.”
The USD14 million in Series A funding was raised from a collection of VC firms spanning the globe – from Silicon Valley to Europe and Asia – and is being led by US-based Pelion Ventures.
Other major investors include Sherpa Capital, best known for its investment in Uber; Idinvest Partners, the largest venture capital firm in continental Europe through its Elelectranova Capital II Fund and in partnership with Ecomobility Ventures; Motorola Ventures; 360 Capital Partners; and Draper Associates Investments, which led Neurala’s seed funding round.
“Pelion is a firm that believes in a future in which automobiles, robots, drones and other mobile hardware devices will need to navigate the world autonomously and safely, and we believe that Neurala has the right solution to enable that future,” says Ben Lambert, senior associate at Pelion Ventures. “Neurala's executives have a deep technology background and have been leading development efforts in this industry since 2006. As a result, the company is far ahead of its competitors and is at the forefront of the deep learning and computer vision space.”
"Neurala technology is already achieving great traction in Europe. We will be able to help the company’s founders build upon that momentum to accelerate growth,” says Idinvest’s director Julien Mialaret. “Our fund sponsors have ideas for ways to deploy Neurala's exciting technology."
