Israeli startup Foretellix bags $14 million Series A to enable safe autonomous vehicles with its GigaScale intelligent verification

The headlines are filled with news of autonomous vehicles from tech giants like Tesla, Google Waymo, and other tech heavyweights. Advances in artificial intelligence coupled with falling prices of LiDAR  (light detection and ranging) sensors, now makes it possible for startup companies to invest in the industry. What is rarely talked about, however, is the enormous challenge of verifying autonomous vehicles. Fortellix is a Tel-Aviv, Israel-based startup addressing the very large ‘GigaScale’ challenge of verifying autonomous vehicles, consisting of millions to billions of scenarios. The company provides advanced solutions for inspecting the smart systems of autonomous vehicles.

Today, Foretellix announced it has completed a $14 million Series A funding to accelerate the development, customer programs and deployment of its coverage driven verification solution. The company has now raised over $16 million since inception. Founded in 2017 by Yoav Hollander, Foretellix is developing a comprehensive verification framework for Intelligent Autonomous Systems (IAS), with an emphasis on Autonomous Vehicles (AVs).Foretellix is founded by a team of experienced verification experts and thought leaders from the VLSI and SOC world. The foundation of this system is SDL – a multi-execution-platform Scenario Description Language. Foretellix’s vision is to make SDL an open, non proprietary language.

Before founding Foretellix, its team led a start-up to a successful IPO, using proven coverage driven methodologies, intelligent automation, and analytics of large data sets for the verification of complex semiconductor products. Foretellix also provides leading developers of autonomous vehicles with the ability to realize and demonstrate the extremely high level of safety required to unleash the full potential of the autonomous revolution. Foretellix develops coverage driven verification solutions to ensure that the autonomous vehicle behaves properly in the 100’s of millions of critical driving scenarios, and are therefore safe for broad deployment.

Foretellix also automates the extraction and analytics of the safety related coverage metrics, representing the percentage of scenarios proven to work in a wide range of possible situations and conditions. These metrics are required by developers, consumers, suppliers, insurance companies and regulators. This solution works with all required driving platforms, including simulators, X-in-the-loop configurations, test tracks and test vehicles.

“We are excited to work with 83North, Jump Capital and Nextgear Ventures to tackle the largest obstacle to the adoption of autonomous vehicles – safety. This funding will help us accelerate the industry transition from ‘quantity of miles’ to ‘quality of coverage’ and broad deployment,” said Ziv Binyamini, CEO of Foretellix. “These investors also bring Foretellix tremendous knowledge and experience in ramping successful start-ups, enterprise business models, and penetrating the automotive industry.”

“Foretellix is a company we have been watching for some time,” said Gil Goren, General Partner of 83North. “The automotive industry needs a significantly more powerful solution to ensure safety and confidence in autonomous cars. We believe Foretellix has leveraged and adapted proven technology and methodologies to quickly deliver this solution.”

“We believe in the critical need Foretellix is addressing with their coverage driven solution,” said Saurabh Sharma, Partner of Jump Capital. “We now know that the enormous investment in the development of autonomous cars can only be leveraged by a solution to the enormous gap in confidence of safety. We believe Foretellix can address this gap.”

“We invested early in Foretellix and have decided to double down on our investment based on the company progress and the rapidly growing market interest,” said Dr. Tal Cohen founding partner at Drive and Next Gear Ventures. “Foretellix’s technology is unique and instrumental in aligning safety with autonomous vehicles from the starting line.”