The company raised $600 million from investors as it prepares for an eventual IPO.
Applied Intuition Inc. — a startup developing technology for autonomous vehicles, drones and more — has raised $600 million from investors in a deal that more than doubles its valuation to $15 billion.
The financing, which the company plans to announce Tuesday, was co-led by BlackRock-managed funds and the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. Additional investors include Franklin Templeton, the Qatar Investment Authority, Lux Capital, BOND and General Catalyst. The new deal is a significant valuation jump from $6 billion last year.
The company, which recently announced a partnership with OpenAI, works with 18 of the largest automotive businesses to integrate its technology into their vehicles’ dashboards — including Volkswagen AG and Toyota Motor Corp. Those tools make driving significantly safer, the startup said.
Founded in 2017, the company was early to the artificial intelligence category. “It’s not random” that letters A and I are the company’s initials, said Qasar Younis, co-founder and chief executive officer.
With the new funding, the company plans to expend its work “into every moving machine,” Younis said in a statement. That includes “everything from cars and trucks to drones and factories.”
The list also encompases defense technology. The company has won millions in Defense Department contracts and its tools can help coordinate drone activity. Applied Intuition also bought national security startup EpiSys Science Inc. earlier this year.
The new financing, which also includes a secondary offering, will be spent on expanding the business into further categories. The company is also open to making more acquisitions.
Mamoon Hamid, partner at Kleiner Perkins, said that he invested because the transportation category is large — and safety is essential. “You can’t screw up cars” in terms of safety technology, he said. And while there are now many well-capitalized AI businesses, he thinks that Applied Intuition’s success would be very hard to replicate, not only because they have a strong existing market share, but because “it’s a hard industry to crack.”
Hamid is optimistic about the startup’s plans for an initial public offering, saying that the company, which has hundreds of millions in revenue, already has a “financial profile that can allow them to be public.”
In an interview, Younis said that an IPO is a near-term goal, pending market conditions. This is “probably the last round we’ll raise before we go public,” he said.
Written by: Katie Roof @Bloomberg
The post “Applied Intuition Hits $15 Billion Valuation for AI Vehicle Tech” first appeared on Bloomberg