PLEASANTON, Calif., March 7, 2024 — Neural Propulsion Systems (NPS), a pioneer in software-defined radar, today announced it secured a $17.5 million Series B funding round. The round is led by Cota Capital with contributions from GM Ventures, the venture capital arm of General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM), and RTX Ventures, the venture capital arm of RTX (NYSE: RTX). This collaboration marks a transformative step in enhancing roadway safety (benefiting pedestrians, drivers and all other traffic participants) and defense radar systems.
NPS will use the investment to further develop and apply its award-winning Atomic Sensing Platform to automotive radar technology. The platform provides significantly enhanced, reliable radar resolution and groundbreaking precision. The improved performance stems from a new mathematical framework known as the Atomic Norm (AN), revolutionizing how the raw sensor data is processed into relevant information.
“This investment confirms the value of our vision and technology,” said Dr. Behrooz Rezvani, Founder and CEO of NPS. “By harnessing the potential of our newly developed radar technology, we can potentially achieve performance enhancements that are over 10 times greater than current radar capabilities, putting us at the forefront of revolutionizing the $28 billion radar market. Our radar software works with all radar hardware and significantly improves the performance of existing sensing platforms with lower cost and more efficiency.”
The NPS software-defined radar, SDR, achieves near maximum likelihood performance in detection — meaning, the NPS proprietary software achieves close to what is theoretically possible with existing radar sensors. This advancement in radar technology enables clearer and earlier detection.
“Behrooz and his team are achieving new benchmarks for advanced radar sensing technology,” said Bobby Yazdani, Founder and Partner of Cota Capital. “We recognize the significant impact NPS can have in the fields of mobility and defense systems, and our investment reflects Cota Capital’s commitment to ground-breaking innovation.”
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) proposed rule changes in May 2023 aim to significantly reduce roadway fatalities by strengthening regulations around automatic emergency braking (AEB) and pedestrian AEB (PAEB). NPS’s technology is poised to further assist companies and suppliers in meeting these new standards, using less complex and more reliable sensors.
“NPS’s continued focus on enhancing defense radar systems exemplifies the commitment that is needed to transform the aerospace and defense landscape,” said Dan Ateya, President and Managing Director at RTX Ventures. “To protect against tomorrow’s threats, RTX Ventures looks to invest in companies working to solve the most complex challenges today and the NPS automotive radar technology does just that.”
About Atomic Sensing Platform and Atomic Norm Tensor Processing Software
The NPS Atomic Sensing Platform for automotive market is powered by the patented Atomic Norm Tensor Processing Software to achieve disruptively high resolution, precision and reliability. NPS ANTP radar SW performance is based on a new mathematical framework, the Atomic Norm, that transforms how sensor data is processed and understood. AN Radar SW technology achieves revolutionary, never-before-seen radar performance that solves industry-level challenges and opens the door for the future of ADAS, autonomous driving and next-generation aerospace and defense systems.
About Cota Capital
Cota Capital backs the bold. Cota is a technology investment firm that partners with exceptional teams to build and grow timeless companies that enable the future. Cota delivers Knowledge Capital, a differentiated combination of deep operational expertise, know-how, impactful and data-driven market insights and intelligence, and a vast industry network. Together, these elements are put to work to empower Cota entrepreneurs to execute their vision, unlock scale, minimize risk and bring enduring ideas to life. For more information, please visit www.cotacapital.com.
About Neural Propulsion Systems (NPS)
Founded in 2018 by Silicon Valley luminaries, NPS develops digital imaging radar technology. Based on a radar algorithm system capable of running on a multitude of hardware platforms, the NPS Atomic Norm Radar SW achieves performance that reaches the information-theoretic limits of what is mathematically possible, enabling groundbreaking applications in the mobility and defense industries. Find NPS on the Web, X and LinkedIn.
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SOURCE Neural Propulsion Systems
