Blickfeld raises €15m to scale up lidar production
German lidar sensor developer Blickfield has raised €15m from the European Investment Bank (EIB) to scale up.
Blickfeld, based in Munich, will use the funding to accelerate the development of its sensors in autonomous driving and a variety of industrial applications, and to expand in the US and Asia. The company is currently opening regional offices in international markets such as the US and China.
The funding is provided under the EIB’s venture debt programme and secured by a guarantee from the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), also known as the “Juncker Plan.” It already has equity funding from Bayern Kapital, Continental, Fluxunit – ams OSRAM Ventures, High-Tech Gründerfonds, New Future Capital (NFC), Tengelmann Ventures and UVC Partners.
It uses commercial off-the-shelf and silicon components with a patent-pending scanner technology which merges the best of both silicon microfabrication and already established lidar architectures for low-cost mass fabrication and still meet the technical performance specifications required by car OEMs.
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“The EIB’s support is testimony to Blickfeld’s maturity as a company and the confidence that those responsible have in the potential of our LiDAR technology,” said Mathias Müller, founder and CEO of Blickfeld. “The capital provided by the EIB is the ideal financial instrument for us to expand even faster. We are convinced that our LiDAR solutions will make a real difference for many industries and we are very pleased that the EIB has recognised an important innovative technology that will strengthen Europe’s position as a key centre of industry and business.”
“With our venture debt program, we support innovative young companies that need long-term growth capital to fully focus on the further development of their products and their global marketing. The funding of Blickfeld shows the EIB’s strong commitment to supporting innovative early-stage companies to strengthen Europe’s competitiveness,” said EIB Vice-President Ambroise Fayolle, who is responsible for Germany and EFSI,
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