Self-driving startup Venti raises $28.8 mln to speed up growth

LG

28/03/2023 13:00

By Nick Carey
       LONDON, March 28 (Reuters) - Self-driving startup Venti
Technologies said on Tuesday it has raised $28.8 million in
Series A funding to speed up the growth of its autonomous
vehicle (AV) business for customers the logistics and supply
chain industry.
    Investors in the funding round included LG Technology
Ventures, the venture capital arm of LG Corp  003550.KS  unit LG
Group, and UOB Venture Management, the venture capital arm of
Singapore's United Overseas Bank.
    Venti has been developing its self-driving for vehicles for
the last three years at one of the world's largest container
ports in Singapore and is already generating revenue.
    This year the company will deploy dozens of entirely
self-driving vehicles, CEO Heidi Wyle told Reuters.
    She said Venti's focus will be on AVs for ports, airports,
warehouses, factories and depots, all environments with few
pedestrians that are easier to automate.
    Venti was founded in 2018 by a number of Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT) alumni, including Wyle. 
    The technology the firm has developed can park 45-foot
(13.72 m) trucks with trailers accurately down to one inch (2.54
cm), she said. 
    "The problem we are solving is 10,000 times simpler
mathematically and computationally than downtown San Francisco,"
Wyle said.  
    Developing fully self-driving vehicles that can go
everywhere has proven harder and more expensive than expected,
but investors are continuing to fund startups that target
simpler self-driving vehicle solutions far removed from
pedestrians and other vehicles operated by humans. 
    As robotaxi companies have missed many targets for rolling
out self-driving cars, investors and customers have become wary
of promises of full autonomy. 
    Wyle said customers now want proof the technology works.
Last September Venti had to demonstrate a driverless pilot run
at the Singapore port for an "exacting customer".
    "We're now their core autonomy provider," she said. "But
they made us prove it."
    
     
      

 (Reporting by Nick Carey; editing by Jason Neely)
 ((nick.carey@thomsonreuters.com; +44 7385 414 954;))