Fluxunit, OSRAM's Venture Capital arm joins leading VC funds well as automotive OEMs and Tier-1 suppliers in the financing round of Recogni. Recogni is a Silicon Valley start-up with subsidiary in Munich which develops a vision-oriented AI platform for autonomous vehicles, which allows the processing of sensor data from LiDAR, camera and RADAR systems in real-time and at low power consumption. Other investors of the financing round include GreatPoint Ventures, Toyota AI Ventures, BMW iVentures, Faurecia and DNS Capital with an amount of US$25 million.

As the automotive industry is transitioning to autonomous vehicles, a network of computers is needed to drive these vehicles efficiently on a limited energy budget. While these AI systems are trained offline, they need to process the sensor data in real-time in the vehicle. Today, autonomous vehicles have hit the processing efficiency wall and are unable to transition to the next level of autonomy and beyond. Recogni is focused on creating high-performance and low-power AI processing to help make autonomous vehicles a reality.

(Image: Osram)

Founded in 2018 and headquartered in San Jose, California, the company is positioning itself to revolutionize the processing of sensor data for Level 2+ autonomous vehicles. Using a Vision Cognition Processor, Recogni will solve the problem of running perception algorithms in the vehicle in real-time and at low power consumption. The company’s founders possess deep industry experience in system design, AI, vision, and custom silicon design.

“We truly believe in sensor fusion based on camera, RADAR, and LiDAR, but the computational requirements for processing the flood of data in real time and running perception algorithms on the edge remain one of the critical bottlenecks in autonomous driving today”, explained Sebastian Stamm, Investment Manager at Fluxunit – OSRAM Ventures. “Recogni solves this problem with a unique and disruptive approach – we are proud to back this team of world-class IC- and system developers as well as automotive AI experts.”

The investment in Recogni underlines OSRAM’s transition from a lighting company towards a high-tech photonics company in various future applications such as autonomous driving. Via its venture arm Fluxunit, OSRAM will contribute their extensive know-how in semiconductors for lighting as well as sensing applications in the automotive industry.