SAN FRANCISCO Self-driving startup Drive.ai said on Tuesday it raised $50 million in a second round of funding as the Silicon Valley company prepared to deploy its technology in pilot vehicles later this year. <\/p>\n
The company, one of a handful of startups building fully autonomous systems for cars, also said it had added to its board Andrew Ng, a prominent figure in the artificial intelligence (AI) industry. <\/p>\n
Ng formerly led AI projects at Baidu and Alphabet's Google. Ng is the husband of Drive.ai's co-founder and president Carol Reiley, a roboticist. <\/p>\n
The latest round of funding - led by New Enterprise Associates, Inc, GGV Capital and existing investor China-based Northern Light Venture Capital - came as investor interest in autonomous vehicles continued to intensify. <\/p>\n
Drive.ai is aiming to build an after-market software kit powered by artificial intelligence to turn traditional vehicles operated by businesses into self-driving models. <\/p>\n
The company said existing business fleets would deploy its kits in pilot tests by year-end. <\/p>\n
Drive.ai plans to distinguish itself through the team's expertise in robotics and deep learning, a subset of AI in which massive amounts of data are fed into systems until they can \"think\" for themselves. <\/p>\n
Drive.ai, which received $12 million in an initial funding round last year, also named to its board the head of Asia for New Enterprise Associates, Carmen Chang. <\/p>\n
(Reporting by Marc Vartabedian, editing by Alexandria Sage and Andrew Hay) <\/p>\n
CHIBA, Japan Japan's Toshiba Corp has pushed back its timeline to clinch a sale of its prized flash memory chip unit, saying the $18 billion deal was being held up due to differences of opinion within the consortium chosen as preferred bidder. <\/p>\n
TOKYO Japan's Toshiba Corp said on Wednesday it is filing a lawsuit against joint venture partner Western Digital Corp. <\/p>\n
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Drive.ai raises $50 million in funding; Andrew Ng joins board - Reuters<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" SAN FRANCISCO Self-driving startup Drive.ai said on Tuesday it raised $50 million in a second round of funding as the Silicon Valley company prepared to deploy its technology in pilot vehicles later this year. The company, one of a handful of startups building fully autonomous systems for cars, also said it had added to its board Andrew Ng, a prominent figure in the artificial intelligence (AI) industry Continue reading