An Austin startup that has been quietly developing innovative digital radar technology that serves as an alternative to lidar has raised $45 million in series C funding as it gathers new customers and expands its team.
The startup, Uhnder Inc., was founded by CEO Manju Hegde and Chief Operating Officer Curtis Davis in Austin in 2015. It raised funding rounds in 2017 and 2019, although it remained in stealth mode until last year, when it began discussing its radar-on-chip technology with trade publications.
Uhnder has raised $145 million total. The latest round was led by Sensata Technologies, a 2006 spinoff from Texas Instruments that is also heavily invested in radar technologies. The company's other backers are a mix of financial and strategic investors, including Magna, Khosla Ventures, Sands Capital Ventures, ACME Capital, Lockheed Martin, SAIC, and new investors EDOM, TDK Ventures and Qualcomm Ventures.
Hegde and Davis have a long history together. They've founded three startups, including AGEIA, which made a physics processing unit chip used to make video game action look more realistic. It was purchased by Nvidia in 2008. Both went on to work with Nvidia for a few years after the acquisition.
Hegde declined to say how many employees Uhnder currently has, though he said it's more than 100. He said the company plans to expand its team, but he didn't specify a target. The company's website has 16 jobs posted in Austin and 15 openings in India.
Uhnder has developed radar-on-chip technology that allows vehicles to detect and track thousands of objects, a key to self-driving cars and assisted driving. It has a long-standing relationship with its first customer, Magna, which is deploying automotive sensor technologies for autonomous driving.
"It will help accelerate safety on the roads," Hegde said.
The founders say the technology is more accurate than lidar, which has recently made headlines after lidar startup Luminar went public in a $3.4 billion special purpose acquisition company merger. Hegde said the radar-on-chip approach allows for more efficient signal processing than lidar, and it requires less engineering. Since lidar operates using light and lasers, radar also has an advantage in snow and rain, Hegde said.
It's essentially a digital evolution of traditional radar.
"Ultimately, there are two things that we're doing," he said. "One is, if anything is mobile, then at some point it will become autonomous and we will help accelerate that."
But Hegde gets more excited by the human impact.
"Solving the problem of accidents and injuries on the road is actually much easier than people think it is," he said. "Electronics is in a state where it can be done, and what we're doing is accelerating that move toward safety on the roads. To me, lots of companies spend time on entertainment and convenience, but this is low-hanging fruit. By building better sensors, better radars, better cameras and fusing them together, we can accelerate the move toward safety. And that's what we want to be at the vanguard of."
As its name implies (under the radar), Uhnder's radar technology and products are still largely in stealth mode — though Max Liberman, the company's vice president of chips, said it has customers and a product in production. In addition to cars, the startup plans to scale into mining, agriculture, aerospace and construction.
"It's very clear in the market that radar is going to be in every vehicle," Liberman said.
Most vehicles, he said, will probably have more like five radar sensors.
"It's a really big market, and it's just starting to grow," Liberman said.
