San Francisco based LiDAR developer Ouster has raised US$ 42M in Series B funding on 8 September 2020. The total funding has raised to US$ 90M.
The Series B funding will be utilized to support new product development and accelerating worldwide sales. The investors who participated in the funding round include Cox Automotive, Tao Capital Partners, and Fontinalis Partners.
About Ouster
Ouster was founded in 2016 by Angus Pacala and Mark Frichtl. It builds high-resolution LiDAR sensors for the transportation, robotics, industrial automation, and smart infrastructure industries. LiDAR sensors are used in autonomous vehicles. They measure the distance to objects by illuminating them with light and measuring the reflected pulses. It had launched its second generation of high-resolution lidar sensors in January 2020, after which its 12-month revenue has increased by 62%.
“Ouster’s digital lidar architecture gives us fundamental advantages that are winning over customers in every market we serve. Digital CMOS technology is the future of lidar and Ouster was the first to invent, build, patent, and commercialize digital lidar. Once our customers experience the resolution and reliability of these sensors at an affordable price, there’s no turning back to legacy analog lidar,” said CEO of Ouster, Angus Pacala.
According to the company, it has over 800 customers across 15 markets including Postmates, Ike, May Mobility, Kodiak Robotics, U.S. Army, NASA, Stanford University, and MIT University among others. In January, its second-generation LiDAR sensors came with three new 128-beam models:
1. The OS0 ultra-wide view LiDAR sensor for navigating urban environments and warehouses.
2. The OS1 mid-range LiDAR, with a 120-meter range and a 45-degree field of view.
3. The OS2 long-range LiDAR sensor, with a 200+ meter range for high-speed vehicle automation.
Responding to the strong global demand for its products, Ouster has opened its offices in Paris, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, and Suzhou. The LiDAR market is projected to become a US$ 1.8 billion industry in 2025. Some of Ouster’s competitors include Innoviz Technologies, Luminar Technologies and Velodyne among others.
