Tel Aviv-based ultra-high-resolution radar startup Arab Robotics has a new customer: Chinese autonomous driving company AutoX, which has collected 400,000 RB-based radar systems for its fleet of 4 levels. The companies said in a statement that the Arab platform addresses “key issues” that have led to recent AV motor accidents, such as correctly identifying vulnerable road users such as cyclists and pedestrians, identifying stationary objects and removing false alarms caused by ambiguity on radar.
It uses proprietary 2K-resolution, using 30 frames per second imaging technology that the company says is 100 times more detailed than any radar currently on the market. Arab already has partnerships with five Tier 1 automobile suppliers and chipmaker Nvidia, CEO Kobe Marenko said in a recent webcast. He added that the company has two additional purchase orders from an unnamed delivery robot company and “one of the largest car companies in the world.”
AutoX, whose supporters include Alibaba, Shanghai Motors and MediaTek, was at the top of the AV deployment in China. It is the first company in China to test AV on a driverless government road in Shenzhen, the country’s largest city and 1 of the company’s headquarters. In addition, it launched a self-driving taxi service in Shanghai called RoboTaxi. AutoX allowed launching driverless tests in California without a human safety driver, the third company after Waymo and Nuro to get such permission.
Tel Aviv-based Arab said the partnership announced through a merger with industrial tech acquisitions, a special-purpose firm with an equity valuation of $722 million. The move supported by a $100 million PIPE (private investment in public equity) from investors including M&G Investment Management, Varana Capital, Texas Ventures, and Eyal Waldman. Marenko predicted during the webcast that Arab revenue would be only $7 million in 2021, so investors were clearly bullish on the company’s technology. To that end, Marenko said he expects revenue to exceed $300 million in 2025 – an increase of 4,185% in just four years.
