Eye on radar: Startup Oculii draws big investor and weeks later, a buyer

Editor's note: This story is part of a special report on advanced driver-assist systems running in the Nov. 15 edition.

General Motors' investment in radar software company Oculii and the Ohio startup's pending acquisition by computer chip supplier Ambarella Inc. are two of the latest signals that many in the industry feel differently than Elon Musk about radar technology.

Oculii makes software for radar sensors used in advanced driver-assistance systems and autonomous driving. The company says its software can improve the resolution of any radar sensor by up to 100 times, a feat that would not only improve radar's performance but also potentially lead to cost savings for automakers who might otherwise rely on more expensive lidar systems.

"Historically, resolution has been tied directly to the number of antennas and active transceivers that are in the system," Oculii CEO Steven Hong said during an Ambarella conference call with analysts last month. "Our system effectively breaks this trade-off."

Ambarella, a publicly traded company that supplies chips designed to manage visual inputs, on Oct. 26 said it would buy Oculii for $307.5 million. The acquisition, which is expected to close by the end of January, came just weeks after GM's venture capital arm invested millions of dollars in Oculii.

A request for comment from Oculii was not returned. A spokesman for GM declined to comment, citing the pending acquisition.

The moves signal GM and Ambarella remain bullish on the future of radar and its use in advanced driver-assist and autonomous systems, even as other, newer technologies get attention.

That stands in contrast to Tesla and Musk, the electric vehicle maker's CEO. This year, Tesla said Model 3 and Model Y vehicles built for North America would not be equipped with radar.

Musk has called radar one of several "crutches" Tesla does not want to be dependent on as it develops its self-driving technology. The company said it will instead rely on cameras and artificial intelligence.

Hong, in an interview with Reuters in September, said he agreed with comments by Tesla's AI director, Andrej Karpathy, about the shortcomings of traditional radars. Karpathy said in June that radars sometimes make "dumb" measurements of the environment, holding back its vision system.

"Traditional radar is very low resolution and very noisy," Hong said. But high-resolution radars are a key backup to cameras and other sensors when they fail, thus providing "extra safety," he added.

According to Ambarella, Oculii "is engaged with 10 of the top 15" Tier 1 companies on licensing its software, and it has "commercial development contracts with leading OEM and AV companies."

Oculii is one of several companies developing advances in radar technology. California startup Spartan Radar, for instance, was founded in 2020 with a focus on building software that improves the technology's performance in autonomous vehicles. The company closed a $15 million series A round last week, following the $10 million it raised in a seed round in August.

Meanwhile, supplier giant Magna International Inc. will use "digital radar-on-a-chip" technology developed by Uhnder, an Austin, Texas, startup, on the Fisker Ocean electric crossover next year.

Phil Magney, president of researcher VSI Labs, said advances in high-definition radar technology have significant potential for automakers and other companies as they roll out their advanced driver-assist and autonomous driving systems.

"Radar, historically, doesn't know what it's looking at. It just knows something is there. Now comes along HD radar," he said. "You're able to get a lot more data points, and you can do more with more data."

Oculii's Hong told Reuters that as radar technology advances and prices come down, he expects Tesla to eventually embrace radar. "It is gonna be a no-brainer," Hong said.

Reuters and Bloomberg contributed to this report.