Viakoo, the provider of IoT device remediation, announced it has secured $10 million (€8.58 million) in Series A funding led by Shasta Ventures, joining existing investors Stanley Black & Decker, PivotNorth Capital, and Blue Fog Capital. This latest round will be used to expand executive leadership, and investment in product development and go-to-market. The company
A new user experience evaluation from Strategy Analytics’ In-Vehicle UX (IVX) group has assessed the Lynk & Co 01 infotainment system, the car and mobility concept designed and engineered in Goteborg, Sweden and manufactured in Yuyao, China.
The 01 aims to focus on experiences rather than ownership, hence its emphasis on sustainability and absence of ‘hassle’. The infotainment system is adequate, with a large amount of real estate that allows for a very flat menu structure. But while it has some nice touches and functionalities which will delight their target consumers, it does not include Google Automotive Services (GAS). Besides obviously missing Google Maps, Google Assistant can also only be accessed through Android Auto.
Diana Franganillo , director IVX and report author comments, “The Lynk & Co 01 brings an interesting mobility concept to Europe, backed up by Volvo’s engineering capability and reputation. The vehicle’s exterior design is attractive ‘in person’, beyond how it looks in pictures and videos, and it’s interior is even more spacious than that of the Volvo XC40, despite sharing the same platform.
Continues Franganillo, “Despite the lack of GAS, which is a shame in our opinion, the Lynk & Co 01 infotainment system is functional and benefits from a voice assistant “Frank”. While Frank performs reasonably well, he is packed with an unengaging and artificial smurf-like metallic voice which could be better optimised for the user experience. However, the Home View is customisable and all the features follow a consistent structure, are easy to navigate and can be operated whilst driving thanks to sufficiently large and separated pressable areas and standard icons.”
Adds Chris Schreiner, director IVX , “The whole concept, car and infotainment system have been built to catch the attention of its target customers, especially with the inclusion of features such as the ‘Journey Camera’ dash cam with selfie function and ‘Scoreyteller’, Lynk & Co’s gaming app designed to enhance classic road trip games such as ‘I Spy’ and ‘21 Questions’. Although the latter would benefit from more use of voice interaction to facilitate the games, both apps are nice attempts at generating conversations inside and outside the car.”
AutoFill, a Dutch deep tech company revolutionising inspection workflow processes for the automotive and rail industries, has secured €2.6 million in pre-series A funding.
The round was led by powerhouse investors, Innovation Industries, with participation from Deeptech Labs, a highly coveted accelerator initiated by Arm and The University of Cambridge, among others. Rick Belluzzo, former COO of Microsoft, and Bram Schot, former CEO of Audi both of whom joined the AutoFill board of advisors earlier this year also participated in the round.
Currently, most object inspections in the automotive and rail sectors are performed by humans. Existing automated solutions, meanwhile, are costly and require substantial space and infrastructure to function. AutoFill has a solution which combines vision technology with multisensor data fusion to identify anomalies and increase the accuracy of quality standards.
Rick Belluzzo
Designed to be as agile as possible, AutoFill’s solution can be incorporated seamlessly into existing operational processes, ensuring further efficiencies, objective reporting, increased safety, and cost savings. All of this modernises, optimises and enhances quality control at scale.
Speaking on the fundraise, AutoFill CEO and co-founder, Gideon Richheimer, says, “AutoFill’s technology removes the limitations presented by human involvement, significantly raising safety and accuracy standards, and making huge financial savings for the enterprise. We believe our solution will play an important role in accelerating a more efficient future initially for the automotive and rail industries and are extremely grateful to our investors for supporting us in this mission.”
Headquartered in Wassenaar, AutoFill recently opened a second office in the High Tech Campus Eindhoven, claims to be the largest centre for technology innovation in Europe.
The company has received a major vote of confidence in its solution, having secured backing from Innovation Industries, a venture capital firm which is renowned for only backing the most promising deep tech start-ups and scale-ups.
The investment will be used to advance AutoFill’s technical solution, strengthen its current operational deployments at partner sites, and grow its engineering team.
Harm De Vries, co-founder and general partner at Innovation Industries, states, “AutoFill is a ‘new gen’ deep tech start-up founded by a very experienced team. The offering is a market validated, highly scalable solution. We are convinced that AutoFill will have a revolutionary impact on inspection workflow processes for numerous industries potentially saving them billions of dollars a year.”
Bram Schot
Miles Kirby, CEO of Deeptech Labs says, “Following AutoFill’s completion of our powerful and highly coveted accelerator programme, we are delighted to demonstrate our commitment to the company through this funding round. AutoFill’s progress demonstrates the value of our role as a catalyst for deep tech success. We are excited to see the positive impact AutoFill’s technology can have on the automotive and rail industries as well as many other sectors. We look forward to continuing to support AutoFill and helping the business grow.”
Bram Schot, former Audi CEO and AutoFill board member says, “I joined AutoFill’s board of advisors earlier this year because I was so impressed by the experience of the leadership team and the credibility of its solution. My subsequent investment in its future is testament to that continued confidence, and I look forward to witnessing the results of this successful funding round first-hand.”
London UK, 28October 2021 — Nozomi Networks Inc., the provider of OT and IoT security, announced new updates in Vantage, the cloud-based OT/IoT network security solution that equips security professionals and industrial operators with actionable, AI-driven insights to manage risk and speed precise remediation. The new enhancements help eliminate “alert fatigue” by narrowing down the hundreds of notifications
Six Scottish local authorities alongside Scotrail, Blackwood Homes and Care and Borders College are set to benefit from a new Internet of Things (IoT) trial which has the potential to transform the experience of people who live within communities across the country. The ‘IoT Accelerator Packs’ are being supplied by North, the UK’s IoT service
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. 27 October, 2021 – InterSystems, a data technology provider dedicated to helping customers solve the most critical scalability, interoperability, and speed problems, announced that its InterSystems IRIS data platform now features full native support for Python, unleashing the power of the popular programming language for creating data-intensive, mission-critical applications. By embedding Python directly into the
The government functions to serve and represent its citizens, but around the world, citizens experience substandard public services with minimum transparency. The governments fail to support individuals and communities efficiently. The services provided in many parts, from education to health, are broken. Reading this, some people might advocate the idea of bringing privatising public services.
The IoT connectivity market is forecast to grow strongly, and global and regional contracts will take an even larger share of this market by 2025. An increasing share of companies are connecting IoT devices as part of a global or regional contract, rather than purely national agreements. The appeal of a single contract for multiple
