The Venn diagram of engineers that know just a little bit about AI, self driving, and mining has a small intersection. Pronto.ai CEO Anthony Levandowski needs as lots of these folks as attainable. And an acquisition helps him obtain that objective.
The San Francisco-based startup, which has developed a self-driving system designed for haulage vehicles and different off-road autos used at development and mining websites, has acquired competitor Secure AI, TechCrunch has realized.
Phrases of the deal haven’t been disclosed. Nonetheless, Levandowski mentioned the acquisition is a expertise and expertise play. The majority of the small 12-person startup’s engineering staff and its IP will come over to Pronto. A supply aware of the deal mentioned Secure AI acquisition worth was in “the tens of millions.”
“Within the autonomous haulage system area, there’s actually sort of two gamers — it’s SafeAI and us,” Levandowski informed TechCrunch in a latest interview, including that SafeAI and Pronto have taken totally different approaches to the market. “We’ve been rising a ton and wanted so as to add extra folks and assets to the staff, so it made sense to buy them … have extra wooden behind fewer arrows in order that we may develop quicker.”
Pronto, which was co-founded with Ognen Stojanovski in 2018, makes use of superior sensors, cameras and synthetic intelligence to function haul vehicles autonomously. Pronto additionally makes use of Pollen Cell, a peer-to-peer open supply cellular knowledge community the startup launched in 2022 that permits it to alternate knowledge anonymously and at excessive speeds with out counting on legacy carriers. Pollen is used to assist websites with little to no connectivity.
Pronto has stored its staff pretty lean at about 40 folks. The SafeAI acquisition will assist Pronto serve extra clients, together with internationally, Levandowski mentioned. Final yr, Pronto prolonged a partnership with Heidelberg Supplies North America, one of many largest construct supplies and cement producers on the planet, following a pilot program on the firm’s Bridgeport Quarry in Texas. Pronto’s expertise is built-in into Komatsu haulage vehicles, which operates autonomously on the website.
Earlier this yr, Pronto introduced an settlement with Heidelberg to deploy greater than 100 autonomous vehicles and increasing its staff in Brazil.
The acquisition can even permit Pronto meet a wide range of wants from small quarries to giant mines.
Notably, the acquisition will permit Pronto to supply clients a tiered expertise portfolio. Pronto is thought for its camera-only strategy. SafeAI, which was based in 2017 and raised $38 million in Sequence B spherical of funding three years in the past, makes use of a number of sensors on-vehicle cameras, radar, and lidar. Pronto plans to supply the multi-sensor strategy in addition to use SafeAI’s security framework that has been ASIL D-certified, the very best security integrity degree within the trade.
