In the world of autonomous vehicles, the amount of money companies raise in venture rounds is much like the dreams of said companies’ founders: outsized.聽This isn’t exactly bombshell news. The retail cost of sensor arrays and other automation systems , and that doesn’t count the car itself.
So a few million dollars may be small potatoes, right? Well, that depends on the tech and the team.
According to an SEC filing posted today, in external funding. develops hardware and software for self-driving enthusiasts to . The startup also offers聽 that brings together navigation and music streaming with its own .
It’s unclear who invested in this round. , which valued the company at $20 million pre-money according to Crunchbase data.
People formerly associated with the company include its former head of machine learning, Yunus Saatci, a specialist in probabilistic machine learning with a Ph.D. from Cambridge University. Saatci is now a researcher at . was a former advisor who now serves as co-founder and CEO of 聽a blockchain infrastructure company. Jacob Smith, the company’s former head of operations, is now the general manager of Bitcoin.com.
What’s In Comma’s Rearview Mirror
The company was founded by George Hotz, a well-known hardware hacker who sometimes goes by “” online. His exploits are numerous. In 2007, at 17 years old, he spent 500 hours tinkering and soldering his way to being the from the AT&T network, which held an exclusive network agreement at the time. He , plus three locked iPhones, a few weeks later.
In 2011, Geohot found himself in legal hot water in as the subject of a lawsuit by Sony after 聽in 2010.
Geohot founded Comma in 2015 in the hopes of converting conventional autos into autonomous vehicles by installing an onboard sensor array, called the Comma One, that integrates the car’s speed-control and steering systems. According to , he turned down a multimillion-dollar bonus offer from Elon Musk to join Tesla’s automation team.
In 2016, by the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration, which led and “[explore] other products and markets.”
In July 2017, Comma released a device called Panda, an $88 dongle which plugs into a car to let drivers track “RPMs, MPG, cornering G-force, battery life, and so much more.” In conjunction with the analytics software, Panda is billed “like Fitbit for your car,” according to .聽The company鈥檚 aforementioned dashcam, the EON, was released with a development kit in October 2017.
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