Israeli autonomous AI mobility startup Cortica has raised undisclosed funds in its Series B funding round to create autonomous car venture.

The round was led by global automotive giants Toyota AI Ventures and BMW i Ventures.

It was also joined by German automotive parts manufacturer Continental AG and Israeli venture capital fund OurCrowd.

The proposed joint venture will focus on enhancing car safety and reducing casualties on motorways worldwide.

Cartica AI co-founder and CEO Igal Raichelgauz said: “We’re excited to have these leading funds and strategic players on board. Our goal is to introduce a novel, yet proven, AI approach to the automotive industry, which will pave the way for a safer and more autonomous transportation.

“Our strategy is to build strong partnerships with leading automotive players in order to bring our solution to the high-volume automotive marketplace by the end of next year. Joining forces with these leading players is another substantial validation of our unique technology and business strategy.”

Cartica AI stated that it will use the funds to develop computer vision to understand and analyse surroundings with its in-house AI technology.

The technology imitates the activity of a neuron and the brain of mammals, which enables AI to learn on its own without the interference of any manual input.

BMW i Ventures partner Kasper Sage said: “Cortica AI introduces a series of important technological advancements for an OEM, ranging from low compute requirements and low energy consumption to a transparent decision-making process of the computer vision-based perception stack.

“Updates to the system can be included within minutes without the need to re-run vast amounts of training data like neural network-based approaches.

“This is of immense value before a new system release. We believe Cortica will thus play a key role in the development of Autonomous Driving and Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS) by OEMs and Tier 1s, allowing them to design safe and predictable solutions that fulfill the strict requirements of the market.”

Toyota AI Ventures founding managing director Jim Adler said: “We’ve been impressed with the quality of Cortica’s team and their unsupervised learning approach to new perception solutions for the automotive market. We look forward to working with them as they power the next generation of mobility AI solutions.”