SafeAI said on Wednesday, Dec. 14, that it had closed a $38 million Series B investment round with investors including Builders VC, McKinley Management, the George Kaiser Family Foundation, and Energy Innovation Capital, as Forbes reported.
In this funding round, Moog Inc. participated as a strategic investor.
All of the previous investors were also present for this investment round: Autotech Ventures, Brick & Mortar Ventures, Embark Ventures, Newlab, and Vimson Group.
Rapid Growth
SafeAI has recently seen rapid expansion thanks to agreements with industry leaders like MACA to deploy 100 mining vehicles and Siemens to establish an autonomous electric fleet for the Obayashi Corporation of Japan.
SafeAI founder and CEO Bibhrajit Halder said in an interview with Forbes that the business has secured a deal with a major US client.
According to Halder, the funds will be used to roll out the firm's technology solutions and begin manufacturing early next year.
They are also seeking to hire more employees with backgrounds in software engineering and business operations. Over the next two years, they plan to expand.
SafeAI's staff size quadrupled to nearly 90 individuals this year. In addition to its headquarters in Santa Clara, California, the company has sites in Australia, Japan, and India.
Investor's Choice
One company's choice to participate in SafeAI's newest fundraising round was influenced by the industry's promising future and its ability to meet the demands of the mining and construction sectors.
Mark Blackwell, General Partner at Builders VC, told Forbes via email that they have opted to double down on our investment in SafeAI, as the need for autonomous off-road solutions has never been more substantial in both construction and mining.
SafeAI's technology is now being deployed with essential clients all around the globe, and Blackwell pointed out that both industries are under tremendous pressure to increase performance, efficiency, and safety.
"We are confident that with this financing that the company will be able to expand its footprint and fill a necessary gap in the sector," he concluded.
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SafeAI's Objective
In Forbes' report, SafeAI CEO Halder notes that his firm primarily specializes in retrofitting trucks used to carry materials on a construction and mining site by installing drive-by-wire connections for sending job instructions and adding sensors like cameras, lidar, and radar.
Halder refers to autonomy as "a game changer" since it increases productivity on construction sites by 20%.
Enhanced safety is another major factor in the adoption of autonomous trucks in the construction and mining industries.
According to Halder, these businesses have been using roughly a thousand autonomous cars 24 hours a day, seven days a week, without a single tragic accident.
However, the mining sector has been particularly sluggish in implementing autonomy.
SafeAI claims that just 5% of mining vehicles are robotic, despite the fact that automation solves productivity and safety problems based on data from the Australia Mining Consultancy and Parker Bay Mining.
With this fresh infusion of capital, Halder plans to accelerate SafeAI's expansion into new markets like the construction and mining sectors by increasing the number of self-driving trucks retrofitted with the company's technology.
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