Deal focus: SBI helps Japan AI player smarten up the road

When an autonomous car developed by Uber struck and killed a 49-year-old woman crossing the road earlier this week in the US, it refocused the industry’s attention on safety. Now, as if to further punctuate this spike in awareness, SBI Investments is leading a JPY1.1 billion ($10.3 million) Series A round for a Japanese start-up that aims to turn so-called smart cars into truly informed decision-makers. 

The company, Ascent Robotics, plans to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into every aspect of a car’s operation, including navigation, mapping, handling, and passenger management. This approach is both safer and more expensive. Prototypes produced by Ascent will cost about $700,000 a unit – versus an industry average of around $450,000 – due to the use of a more thorough array of sensors such as heat detectors. The vehicle involved in the latest accident had AI in its visual system but no heat sensors. 

“Once the data comes out, my guess is you’ll see that the car actually did see the lady walking across, but it didn’t react because of the heuristic aspects. There wasn’t any link between what the sensors saw, how the AI provided that information, and how the car acted,” explains Fred Almeida, founder and chief architect at Ascent. “That breakdown is one of the core problems with the current approach to robotic cars, and we think that the only way to solve this is to add things like contextual awareness and neural science-based abilities like episodic memory.” 

Ascent believes this story is resonating with investors. The company says a JPY500 million extension of its Series A is set to be finalized in the coming weeks with a handful of brand-name VCs on board. It is also planning a JPY5 billion Series B for later this year and a JPY30 billion Series C immediately prior to listing on the New York Stock Exchange in 2020. During the planned ramp-up, simulation-tested technologies will be incrementally validated on the road, the staff will roughly triple in size to around 250 people, and a new office will be opened in Montreal, an AI hub. 

The tight timing of the schedule was not set internally. Ascent says its original equipment manufacturer [OEM] partners have set the pace by demanding autonomous driving products by 2021. To be considered a reliable partner by this deadline, Ascent must scramble to get big in a hurry and raise around $30 million just for vehicle fleet expansion. Meanwhile, the team is already increasing by one to two people a week.  

Showcasing R&D accomplishments will be the priority in the next two years, along with stakeholder education about the realities of design and development timeframes for smart cars that really know what they’re doing. “A lot of OEMs are preparing factories for specific aspects of self-driving cars, but the problem is the majority of the car companies we’ve met have the idea that it is a bolt-on process,” says Almeida. “We have to build a car from the ground up to be an AI car.”   

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• Topics
• North Asia
• Early-stage
• Technology
• Japan
• SBI Holdings
• automobiles
• TMT