AEye’s $40M Series B Includes Numerous Automotive Leaders Including SUBARU, Hella, LG, and SK

Strategic Automotive Investors Support AEye’s iDAR™ Technology
Approach in Addressing the Perception Needs of Both ADAS and Mobility
Markets

PLEASANTON, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/AI?src=hash” target=”_blank”gt;#AIlt;/agt;–AEye, a world leader in artificial perception systems and the developer
of iDAR™, today announced the second close of its Series B financing,
bringing the company’s total funding to over $60 million. AEye Series B
included global automotive OEM, Tier 1 and Tier 2 strategic investors
Hella Ventures, SUBARU-SBI Innovation Fund, LG Electronics, and SK
Hynix. AEye previously announced that the round was led by Taiwania
Capital along with existing investors Kleiner Perkins, Intel Capital,
Airbus Ventures, R7 Partners, and an undisclosed OEM. Series B will be
used to scale AEye’s operations to meet global demand for its artificial
perception systems for both ADAS and Mobility solutions.

AEye takes a disruptive approach to vehicle perception by putting
intelligence at the sensor layer and making it extensible and
controllable via a software-driven architecture. AEye’s iDAR is the
first and only perception system that can easily scale from modular ADAS
solutions to complete 360-degree vision for Mobility applications. iDAR
physically fuses the industry’s only 1550nm, solid-state, agile LiDAR
with a hi-resolution camera to create a new data type called Dynamic
Vixels. This real-time integration occurs in the IDAR sensor, rather
than post fusing separate camera and LiDAR data after the scan. By
capturing both geometric and true color (x,y,z and r,g,b) data, Dynamic
Vixels uniquely mimic the data structure of the human visual cortex,
capturing better data for vastly superior performance and accuracy.

“This funding marks an inflection point for AEye, as we scale our staff,
partnerships and investments to align with our customers’ roadmap to
commercialization,” said Luis Dussan, AEye founder and CEO. “The support
we have received from major players in the automotive industry validates
that we are taking the right approach to addressing the challenges of
artificial perception. Their confidence in AEye and iDAR will be borne
out by the automotive specific products we’ll be bringing to market at
scale in Q2 of 2019. These products will help OEMs and Tier 1s
accelerate their products and services by delivering market leading
performance at the lowest cost.”

“The AEye investment aligns perfectly with SUBARU’s aim to invest in
leading-edge technology to advance our assisted and autonomous driving
efforts,” said Itaru Ueda, Manager of SUBARU-SBI Innovation Fund. “AEye
is a front-runner in developing accurate, low-latency, low cost
perception systems, and we anticipate great synergy in working with AEye
towards safe, reliable vehicle autonomy.”

Built on a robust and rapidly-growing patent portfolio, AEye’s iDAR
recently set a new benchmark for solid state LiDAR range. In performance
tests validated by VSI Labs, iDAR acquired and tracked targets at
more than 1000 meters and at scan rates exceeding 100 Hz – a major
breakthrough in speed and long-range threat detection.

AEye has also recently announced the appointment
of Blair LaCorte as president. An accomplished executive and strategist,
LaCorte brings extensive leadership experience to the company as it
scales global operations.

For more information about AEye and its innovative approach to
artificial perception, please visit www.aeye.ai
or come see us at CES booth #2100 at the Westgate Convention Center, Las
Vegas.

About AEye

AEye
is an artificial perception pioneer and creator of iDAR™, a perception
system that acts as the eyes and visual cortex of autonomous vehicles.
Since its demonstration of its solid-state LiDAR scanner in 2013, AEye
has pioneered breakthroughs in intelligent sensing. The company is based
in the San Francisco Bay Area, and backed by world-renowned investors
including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Taiwania Capital, Intel
Capital, Airbus Ventures, Hella Ventures, LG Electronics, SK Hynix, and
Subaru-SBI Innovation Fund. For more information, please visit www.aeye.ai.

Contacts

AEye, Inc.
Jennifer Deitsch
jennifer@aeye.ai
925-400-4366