Five, the autonomous startup, raises $ 41 million and pivots in B2B, far from building its own fleet – TechCrunch

We are still years from a time when fully autonomous cars can drive us from A to B, and the complexity of getting to this point will likely require hundreds of billions of dollars of investment before it does. become a reality.

This harsh truth now leads to certain changes in the landscape of autonomous startups. England Five (formerly FiveAI), one of the most ambitious companies in space, moves away from its original plan, to design its own fully autonomous cars, and then to manage fleets between them in its own transport service. Instead, he plans to license the technology – starting with software to help test and measure the accuracy of a vehicle's driving systems – which it created for others who are building autonomous cars as well as the wider service ecosystem that will exist around it. As part of this pivot, it also today announces new funding of $ 41 million.

"A year and a little ago, we thought we were probably going to build it all and bring it to market as a whole," said co-founder and CEO Stan Boland in an interview. “But we gradually realized how deep and complex it would be. It was probably until 2019 that we realized that the right thing to do was to focus on the key elements. "

The funding, Series B, includes support from Trustbridge Partners, insurance giant Direct Line Group and Sistema VC, as well as previous investors Lakestar, Amadeus Capital Partners, Kindred Capital and Notion Capital. The company has now raised $ 77 million and although it is not disclosing its valuation, Boland said it was definitely in the last round. (His 2017 series A was $ 35 million.)

Five's change of course is a significant development: the high-level startup, founded by a team that had previously built and sold several chip companies to Broadcom, Nvidia and Huawei, had been the leading partner for a large government-supported pilot project, StreetWise, to test and work on autonomous driving systems in the boroughs of London. The most recent phase of this project, which involves making driver assisted journeys along a 19 km route in south London,took off only last October after being originally announced in 2018.

Five could continue to work on research projects like these, said Boland, but the main goal of the company will no longer be to build cars for themselves, but to work on technologies. which will be sold either to other car manufacturers, or to those who build services for the autonomous industry.

For example, Direct Line, one of Five's new investors and also involved in the StreetWise project, could use tests and measures to determine the risk and pricing of insurance packages for different vehicles.

"autonomous and assisted driving technology will play a huge role in the future of cars, "said Gus Park, managing director of auto insurance at Direct Line Group, in a statement. "We have worked closely with Five on the StreetWise project, and we share a common interest in solving the formidable challenges that will have to be overcome to bring autonomous driving to the market safely." Insurers will need to develop the capacity to measure and underwrite new types of risks. We will collaborate with a team of world-class Fives scientists, mathematicians and engineers to gain the knowledge to create safe and insurable solutions and bring the automotive revolution closer. Park also joins the Five board of directors with this tour.

There were already a number of big players in the autonomous driving space when FiveAI was launched – they included Waymo, Cruise, Uber, Argo AI and many others – and you could have argued that the Writing was already on the wall then for long-term consolidation in the industry. Indeed, in the meantime there have been significant losses, including Drive.AI (which Apple acquired after running out of money),Oryx Vision and Quanergy.

Five arguments to explain why a British – and indeed European – start-up was well-placed to build and operate autonomous cars, and the technology behind it, was due to the complexity of building localized systems: a Large American or Asian company might be able to map the streets in Europe, but that wouldn't have such a good idea of ​​how people behaved on these roads.

However, while it may have been easy to see the potential, the process for getting there has proven to be too difficult.

"What has happened in the past two years is that there has been an appreciation in the industry for the breadth and depth of the challenges involved to the market of self-driving, "said Boland. “Many parts of the jigsaw have to be assembled…. The B2C model requires billions (of investment), but others find their niche as the big technology providers needed to deliver the systems properly. "

As FiveAI (named after "level 5" reached by autonomous driving systems when they are truly autonomous), the company has built (hacked) vehicles with dozens of sensors and, through its tests, has successfully created a veritable reservoir of automotive technology.

"We could offer technologies in a dozen different areas that are difficult for autonomous driving companies," said Boland. Its test and measurement tools point to one of the most difficult challenges: how to ensure that deep learning software used by a business correctly identifies objects, people, weather and 39 other physical factors when she may never have seen them before.

"We have learned a lot about the types of errors that spread from perception to planning … and now we can use it to provide absolute confidence" to those who test systems, he said. declared.

Autonomous cars are one of the biggest AI challenges of our time: not only the requirement to build essentially from scratch computer systems that behave as well (or ideally better) that humans multitasking behind the wheel; but the consequence of doing this wrong is not just a strange chain of words, or some other kind of non-sequencing, but an injury or death. No wonder it still seems a long way to go before seeing something like level 5 systems in action, but in the meantime, investors are ready to continue placing their bets. Partly due to the advancement of its auto project with relatively little funding, Five remains an attractive venture for investors, and Boland hopes it will help him on his next tour.

"We are investing in leading companies that are making transformational change wherever they are," said David Lin of Trustbridge Partners in a statement. "As the European leader in autonomous startups, Five is the most advanced in the development of a clear understanding of scientific challenges and innovative solutions that move the needle forward for the whole of ;industry. Five successfully applied the exceptional scientific and engineering base of Europes to create a world-class team with the energy and ambition to provide safe autonomous driving. We are delighted to join them for this next phase of growth.