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Helm.ai receives $31 million to expand its “unsupervised” autonomous driving technology

Even while macroeconomic challenges have practically cut off the faucet of venture finance and led to increased consolidation in the autonomous car business, there are still a few bright spots.

One such company is Helm.ai, which creates software for autonomous vehicles, robots, and other forms of improved driver support.

A year after securing $26 million in venture capital, the Menlo Park, California-based business secured $31 million in a Series C round headed by Freeman Group. During this funding round, strategic investors Honda Motor Co., Goodyear Ventures, and Sungwoo Hitech joined ACVC Partners and Amplo to help increase Helm.ai’s value to $431 million.

Part of this funding includes the addition of Freeman Group founder and CEO Brandon Freeman to the Helm.ai board of directors. 78 million dollars have been invested into the firm thus far.

Helm.ai was founded in the same vein as several other companies working on autonomous vehicles; its goal is to advance the field by taking a novel approach. Tudor Achim and Vlad Voroninski, co-founders of Helm.ai, decided to target the software rather than the sensors or processing power.

Helm.ai, like many other companies in this space, set out to create software that could comprehend sensor data as well as a person. The method used is the most interesting aspect. To train and refine the self-driving vehicle’s so-called “brain,” engineers frequently use a mix of simulation and on-road testing, as well as massive, human-annotated datasets.

Helm.ai claims to have created software that eliminates the need for these procedures, speeding up the process and cutting costs—beneficial for any application, but especially for advanced driver assistance systems. Using an unsupervised learning technique, the six-year-old business creates programmes that can train neural networks without the usage of massive fleet data, simulation, or annotation. Helm.ai is able to appeal to a wide range of consumers since their software is platform-agnostic and works with any vehicle’s computing and sensors.

To “create software distinction with high-end ADAS and L4 solutions,” as Voroninski puts it, Helm.ai distributes its software to various original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and Tier 1 suppliers in the automobile sector.

“Strategically,” he added, “we’ve known for some years now that our go-to-market approach is going to be centred on high-end ADAS solutions,” alluding to consolidation in the AV business. For quite some time, I’ve been forecasting that most businesses working on autonomous driving technology won’t succeed in getting their products to market because of antiquated methods and ineffective strategies. Thus, I was not at all surprised by this. All the unwarranted excitement about driverless vehicles has made the industry inefficient during the last several years.

Several companies have signed up to use Helm.ai, but CEO Paul Voroninski said he couldn’t disclose who they were out of respect for their NDAs. Before this, Helm.ai has already admitted that Honda was a client. Sift Security’s former head scientist and mathematician says he has spent the previous two years working on commercialising the technology and finding partnerships.

He said that the new capital will be used toward expanding the company’s 50-person team, doing further research and development, and forming new commercial relationships.