Outsight, a French provider of LiDAR-based software solutions, announced on October 20 that it had raised €22 million in a funding round co-led by Energy Innovation Capital (EIC) and the Defense Innovation Fund managed by Bpifrance, alongside ADP Group and historical investors BNP Paribas, SPDG, Demeter, Safran and Faurecia. With this financing, the company intends to develop its product roadmap, including Edge and Cloud Processing, and strengthen its strategic position as a leading Pure Player Software.

Based in Paris, Outsight was founded in July 2019 by four technology entrepreneurs with deep experience in autonomous cars, robotics and embedded AI: Raul Bravo and Olivier Garcia, co-founders of Dibotics, a start-up specializing in simultaneous 3D localization and mapping, Scott Buchter, co-founder of Lasersec and Cédric Hutching, co-founder of Withings.

The start-up also has offices in Sophia-Antipolis and San Francisco. Its team consists of 75 employees, and the innovative and unique solutions it has developed have already led to 72 patent applications. The company was also awarded the Prism Awards 2020 and recognized by Frost & Sullivan as the world leader in spatial intelligence last year for its “Augmented LiDAR Box” solution.

LiDAR-based spatial intelligence

According to Outsight, accelerating the adoption of LiDAR technology, with easy-to-use and scalable pre-processing, will lead to the creation of transformative solutions and products that make the world smarter and safer. The startup’s goal is to “make LiDAR-based spatial intelligence Plug & Play, so it can be used by application developers, in any market.”

For the startup, although LiDAR hardware is now inexpensive and offers high performance, it can only be used effectively by a small number of 3D experts, particularly because of the massive amounts of data it generates and the lack of standardization among dozens of different hardware vendors.

Outsight’s real-time software does not rely on machine learning and therefore solves these problems.

A significant fundraising despite the economic context

The current macroeconomic context is particularly complex and difficult, yet the historical investors, who had participated in Outsight’s €20M seed round in December 2019, did not hesitate to renew their confidence in it. For its part, the participation of the Defense Innovation Fund demonstrates the interest shown by the Ministry of the Armed Forces in Outsight’s solutions.

This funding underscores the growing importance of software integration in the rapidly developing field of LiDAR beyond autonomous cars and Outsight’s cutting-edge work in deploying 3D software solutions in a number of industries, including smart cities, aviation, robotics, manufacturing and logistics.

Raul Bravo, president and co-founder of Outsight, explains:

“LiDAR is emancipating itself from its roots in autonomous automotive R&D to become the solution of choice in large-scale applications in mature markets, thanks to the new category of enabling software we have created.”

Technology that addresses a wide range of industries.

The company’s software solutions have been widely adopted in a wide range of markets in Europe, the United States, Asia and the Middle East. The company cites in particular:

• The Smart Infrastructures market: following an international call for tenders, the ADP Group, which is participating in this new financing, opted in 2020 for the Outsight system in two areas of the Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport, which provides it with detailed analyses of the flow of people and their interaction with the airport’s devices.
• The automotive and intelligent vehicle market: Stellantis uses Outsight technology to process massive amounts of 3D LiDAR data. Other customers use it for their commercial and industrial vehicles, not only for full automation, but also for vehicle safety.
• Mobile Robotics Market: ECA Group uses LiDAR technology for several applications including explosive ordnance disposal, industrial autonomous mobile robots and remote operation.
• Industrial applications include volume measurement, with customers like Dunakontroll combining LiDAR with their own moisture sensing solution through Outsight. Other customers use Outsight’s software in warehouse inventory assessment, agricultural and forestry management contexts.

A cloud-based LiDAR processing solution

After the first real-time solution that only required a web browser to operate (Edge LiDAR processing software), Outsight continues to innovate and integrates this technology into the first cloud-based dynamic scene LiDAR processing solution capable of efficiently processing huge amounts of 3D data, on the order of tens of petabytes.

This new product aims to address a variety of use cases, such as digital twin applications and automatic annotation of 3D data, and puts Outsight in a prime position to shape this emerging market.

Christopher Smith, Managing Director, Energy Innovation Capital, concludes:

“The opportunity for 3D spatial intelligence and autonomy beyond autonomous vehicles is huge and untapped. Outsight’s technically elegant solution unleashes the power of LiDAR for mass adoption by solving the complex raw data problem and providing valuable insights across a wide range of applications. We are very excited to partner with the Outsight team to accelerate expansion in the U.S. and global markets.”

Translated from Outsight annonce une levée de fonds de 22 millions d’euros pour accélérer le déploiement du LiDAR