DEEP TECH START-UP, CRON AI RAISES $4 MILLION IN SERIES A FUNDING ROUND LED BY VENTUREAST AND KITAKI VENTURES.

“The spread of computers and the Internet will put jobs in two categories. People who tell computers what to do, and people who are told by computers what to do.” — Marc Andreessen.

Bringing a newer approach to innovation, Deep Technology merges together science, engineering and design to provide innovative solutions to real world problems. With an aim to make lives easier and build a safer autonomous future, CronAI, a Derby, England and New Delhi based deep tech start-up was founded in 2015 by Tushar Chhabra and Saurav Agarwala. Developing a 3D sensor data edge-processing platform to help machines perceive and learn unknown environments for applications across mobility, intelligent transport infrastructure, logistics, robotics, smart spaces, automation, and security. 

The SenseEDGE platform designed by CronAI intends to bridge the gap between complex 3D sensing dynamics and real world applications. Built from the ground up, the company described its SenseEDGE technology as “a ground-breaking, artificially evolving, self-optimizing heterogeneous FPGA-based [field-programmable gate array] edge platform.” With self-adaptation capabilities, the platform includes accelerated algorithms for complex 3D sensing and the scalability to support next generation algorithms to optimize user experience. 

Partnering with San Francisco based Ouster Inc., founded in 2015 provides high performance digital lidar solutions, and with early access to the CronAI’s perception platform aims to build quality sensor technologies to help mitigate the investment risks associated with performance bottlenecks of traditional GPU computer hardware, customers’ research and development spending, and efficiency of deployments. 

With a Series A funding round, CronAI secured $4 million (approximately Rs. 29.3 crore) led by VenturEast and Kitaki Ventures. Existing investor YourNest Venture Capital participated in the round as well. Speaking on this matter, co-founder & CEO, Tushar Chhabra, “The 3D sensing and automated systems markets are moving towards moon-shot growth, as evidenced by the recent successful SPACs across the value chain. This new investment demonstrates the confidence our investors have in our approach and vision towards becoming the heart of an autonomous future. We are now poised towards global expansion to deliver truly adaptive perception to innovators and allow them to accelerate productization, mitigate time and investment risks, and bring standardization to an extremely fragmented market.” The start-up intends to utilize these funds towards accelerating the delivery of SenseEDGE into newer markets and power the core of autonomous systems and automated machines, shaping the future in a scalable, sustainable, and progressive manner. Being in the advanced stages of development, CronAI has allowed early access to partners, and is now accepting pre-orders for development kits to be shipped by early 2021. 

Additionally, Tushar said: “Ultimately, our aim is to take 3D data perception to singularity. We believe the automated future must be built around a completely reimagined revolutionary and adaptive architecture for processing 3D sensor data, and this is precisely what our platform is optimised to deliver.” Hence, delivering an out-of-the-box solution enabling innovators to migrate and support the next generation of 3D sensing technologies, CronAI plans to disrupt the 3D sensor data-adaptive edge-processing space and establish a strong and enabling foundation for the future-generation of applications.