Foretellix

Foretellix Raised $43 Million

Posted on by Techtime

Above: Ziv Binyamini, Foretellix CEO and Co-Founder

NVIDIA and Toyota have made an investment in Tel aviv-based Foretellix, a provider of safety-driven verification and validation solutions for Automated Driving Systems and Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS). Foretellix announced it has raised $43 million in the first closing of its Series C funding round led by 83North, bringing its total raised capital to over $93 million.

This time, Woven Capital of Toyota and NVIDIA joined the financing round, along with Artofin VC. All major existing shareholders participated, including MoreTech, Nationwide, Volvo Group VC, and Jump Capital. “We are thrilled to have Woven by Toyota and NVIDIA as strategic partners,” said Ziv Binyamini, Foretellix CEO and Co-Founder. “The new funding will help us to extend our worldwide reach, and accelerate our vision for achieving safe autonomy.”

Foretellix’s Safety-Driven Verification & Validation (SDV) Platform, Foretify, is used by Automotive, Trucking, and Mining customers, including Volvo Group, Daimler Truck subsidiary, and many others, to accelerate the development and deployment of their Automated Driving Systems. Foretellix established partnerships with major simulation companies, including IPG, NVIDIA, dSPACE, VIRES, AI Motive, and Cognata.

The platform is based on a new invention: The Measurable Scenario Description Language (M-SDL) – a modeling language addressing the needs of Autonomous Vehicle (AV) and ADAS verification. M-SDL allows users to create a partial, abstract description of a scenario together with a set of legality rules. In order to thoroughly verify an AV or ADAS, users often need to take into account multiple ways of categorizing actors or scenarios. This can be easily modeled in M-SDL, and thus to save the need for countless actual driving sessions on physical roads.

Foretellix led the ASAM OpenSCENARIO® 2.0 (OSC2.0) standard development revolutionizing how safety is developed and tested in Automated Driving Systems. Foretellix contributed key syntax and concepts to ASAM, and it continues to lead further enhancements of the standard. The Foretify platform is the industry’s first solution offering native OSC2.0 support.

Foretellix Acquires Metamoto

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Above: Simulating the activity of a LiDAR sensor in Metamoto’s cloud simulation software

Tel Aviv-based Foretellix has announced the acquisition of California-based Metamoto, a provider of cloud-based simulation of softwares that operate autonomous vehicles. Metamoto informed its customers that it will no longer sell or extend “Simulation as a Service” subscriptions, but would continue to support existing customers. Foretellix invented the Measurable Scenario Description Language (M-SDL) that allows to verify the design of autonomous vehicles and to test and verify their compliance with engineering and regulatory requirements.

The company’s main product, Foretify, makes it possible to perform a comprehensive test of billions of scenarios on a computer, thereby dramatically shortening the scope of road tests that a vehicle has to pass in order to be certified. Co-founder and CEO of Foretellix, Ziv Binyamini, said that automakers reported that following the COVID-19 pandemic and the increase in the implementation of ADAS systems in vehicles, their need for virtual simulation and testing solutions is expanding. “Metamoto’s knowledge will help us to better interface with our partners and the simulation companies, and to accelerate the development of our cloud-based solution”.

The deal hints at a new business model

Following the acquisition, Foretellix is establishing a research and development center in the United States. The unified company currently employs about 60 people in Israel, Europe and the United States. The deal creates a new business model, in which Foretellix transforms from being a software provider to a provider of testing services for automakers and Tier-1 suppliers of the automotive industry. Cloud-based operations have additional technological advantages: they allow to gather insights from the assessments of the various customers in order to streamline and improve Foretellix’s solution.

Foretellix was founded in 2018 by Yoav Hollander, Ziv Binyamini and Gil Amid, who previously founded Verisity, which was sold to Cadence. Hollander and Binyamini are considered to be pioneers in the field of chip design verification. The company’s board of directors includes Gil Goren and Moshe Gavrielov, while the advisory board team includes Zohar Zisapel, Benny Schnaider, Eran Sandhaus, and Prof. Amiram Yehudai.

Moshe Gavrielov Joins the Board of Foretellix

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The former President and CEO of Xilinx, Moshe Gavrielov, joins the Board of Directors of the Tel aviv based Foretellix. During his 10 years tenure ended in 2018 as the leader of Xilinx, Moshe redefined its strategy and drove the company through a broad transformation process bringing it to record annual revenues of $2.54 billion in 2018 and market cap valuation of approximately $20B. Today he also serves as an Executive Chairman of Wind River Systems and Member of the TSMC BOD Compensation Committee.

Foretellix has developed a verification framework for Autonomous Cars, based on approaches brought from the field of VLSI chip design. its Coverage Driven Verification Platform is based on a proprietary Scenario Description Language (SDL), planned to be an open language capable to generate billions of scenarios in order to verify the compliance of Autonomous Vehicles to regulatory and operational demands.

Foretellix is founded by a team of experienced VLSI verification experts. The Founder and CTO, Yoav Hollander, founded Verisity where he invented the “e” verification language. Verisity that was acquired by Cadence Design Systems for $315 million. The CEO Ziv Binyamini also sterted in Verisity, and later served as Corporate VP for simulation and verification business at Cadence and led the development of Verification IP. They all know each other very well: Gavrielov was the CEO of Verisity and closed the deal with Cadence.

Foretellix Founders Yoav Hollander (left) and Ziv Binyamini
Foretellix Founders Yoav Hollander (left) and Ziv Binyamini

“I am honored to welcome Moshe to the board of directors,” said Ziv Binyamini, CEO of Foretellix. “Moshe has not only led a multi-billion dollar company, but has previously worked with many of the Foretellix leaders to build a successful start-up focused on measurable verification.” Gavrielov said that Foretellix will help shape the future of mobility. “I strongly believe in the ability of this leadership team to enable measurable safety, removing the largest barrier to the broad deployment of autonomous vehicles.”