Tel Aviv-based autotech company Aurora Labs has closed an $8.4 million A round of financing led by Fraser McCombs Capital along with previous investor MizMaa Ventures. Aurora Labs, which has developed a predictive maintenance solution for future-proof automotive software, already has three paying global OEM customers. The company says that it will use the funds to expand its international presence beyond its new German offices and advance R&D activity.
In an industry where vehicle innovation is software driven, automakers are faced with ever-shortening development cycles and frequent and unpredictable software issues, resulting in increased rates of costly recalls. Fifteen million vehicles were recalled in 2017 for software flaws, costing the industry billions of dollars, and with the number of lines of code in vehicles projected to grow, so too are the costs. Aurora Labs offers an advanced Predictive Maintenance Solution for connected cars and autonomous vehicles. Their machine learning algorithms uniquely address all three stages of vehicle maintenance: The platform detects faults in software behavior and predicts downtime events; it fixes flaws on-the-go in the electronic control unit (ECU) software, guaranteeing a seamless user experience; and finally, Aurora Labs’ OEM-verified, clientless Over-the-Air (OTA) update solution provides cost-effective and swift ECU updates with zero downtime, without requiring dual memory.
"Our technology fills a crucial role, enabling innovation without compromising on safety in the increasingly software-reliant automotive industry," said Zohar Fox, CEO and Co-founder of Aurora Labs. "The number of lines of code in vehicles is already roughly 150 million and is only expected to climb. The average of 15-50 errors for every thousand lines of code, with QA missing 15% of them, highlights the need for solutions which can predict downtime events before they cause safety issues, ensuring up-to-date software and rapid resolution of flaws in a cost-effective manner. All of these are crucial features for the industry during this period of innovation and change. The ongoing success of our pilots with three major OEMs - along with three new pilots set for the coming months - is indicative of this critical need. This funding will help us drive the industry into the age of self-healing vehicle software."
"Global automotive manufacturers are struggling with the increasingly complex nature of software driven innovation and the need for expedient user adoption. The Aurora Labs Self-Healing Software platform is addressing that challenge head on," said Chase Fraser, a Managing Partner of Fraser McCombs Capital, a US-based fund with over $125 million under management which focuses exclusively on automotive innovation. "Their technology is a crucial component for the connected car of today and the autonomous vehicle of tomorrow. Aurora Labs is poised to greatly assist our industry, and we're pleased to be a partner in that process."
"The growing number of software recalls has become a significant challenge for automakers, in both financial terms and also the inconvenience it causes to countless drivers who are required to take their vehicles in for servicing," noted Catherine Leung, a Founder & General Partner of MizMaa Ventures, a global fund with over $100 million under management focused on deep technology innovators emerging from the Israeli high-tech sector. "The Aurora Labs solution ensures a seamless experience for drivers while providing a rapid and cost-effective way to resolve these flaws - protecting not only automakers’ reputations, but their bottom line as well. This is a game-changer for the automotive industry worldwide."
Aurora Labs was founded in 2016 by Zohar Fox and Ori Lederman with offices in Tel Aviv and Munich.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on July 11, 2018
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