ELECTROMOBILITY
Continental invests into Lidar start-up Blickfeld
By SNick Flaherty olid state LiDAR developer Blickfeld has raised its Series
A round of funding to expand production. The round for
the Munich-based solid state LiDAR start up was led by
the venture capital unit of automotive system supplier Continental
together with Wachstumsfonds Bayern, which is managed
by Bayern Kapital. The round included
the existing investors Fluxunit, which
is part of OSRAM Ventures, High-
Tech Gründerfonds, TEV (Tengelmann
Ventures) and Unternehmertum Venture
Capital Partners. These had provided
$5.7m in seed funding. The amount of
the Series A round was not disclosed.
Blickfeld says it will use the funding
to ramp up production, qualify its solid
state LiDAR sensors for the automotive
market and strengthen the application
development and sales teams for
industrial markets. It currently has 100 staff. The company says
its patented technology is suitable for smart cities, industrial applications
and security systems as well as driverless cars.
“The safety of autonomous vehicles is based on LiDAR
sensor technology. We see Blickfeld in a unique position here,
as our technology stands out due to its mass market capability,”
said Florian Petit, co-founder of Blickfeld. “But the mobility
sector is not the only area of application for our LiDAR sensors
and recognition software: Numerous other successful customer
projects in logistics, smart cities or the security sector confirm
our approach, as does the financial
commitment of the venture capital unit
of Continental, Bayern Kapital and our
previous investors. We are now looking
forward to taking the next steps into
series production.”
“Blickfeld’s industry-agnostic value
proposition, i.e. reliability, performance
and scalability, addresses various
growth markets in automotive and
beyond. What truly sets the company
apart is the advanced technological
maturity, which the team has achieved
in an extremely short amount of time. Supported by a strong
syndicate of VC investors and industry experts, Blickfeld now
is in prime position to establish itself as a key player in future
sensing technology,” said Nils Berkemeyer, Venture Capital
Manager at Continental.
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