Computing firm Codeplay has been given a £2.1 million from firm Foresight Group.

The £1.05 million raised from the private equity group will be used to create and improve safety-certified AI systems for driverless cars and the creation of self driving cars themselves.

Chris Wardle, investment manager at Foresight said, ‘We are very excited to partner with Codeplay, an established leader in heterogenous processor systems and support their expansion into safety-certified artificial intelligence products for the automotive industry as well as other verticals.’

Self driving cars getting ready to roll-out

Codeplay is based in Edinburgh, was founded in 2002 and currently employs 70 people. According to a 2016 report by PWC, the top five car manufacturers spend $46 billion in research and development in 2015 into self-driving cars. Codeplay run algorithms on modern processor platforms so that developers don’t have to optimise the code themselves, which has been the traditional method so far. Heterogeneous computing is a system that uses more than one kind of processor, which is found from high-end servers to budget smartphones.

Andrew Richards, founder and CEO of Codeplay added, ‘We are delighted to receive investment through the Foresight Williams Technology EIS Fund. We have been working hard on the technologies and partnerships to enable AI everywhere, from intelligent smartphones to making cars safer.’

Fundraising builds on deal with Japanese firm

In September last year, Codeplay said they were partnering up with Japanese semiconductor Renesas to develop image recognition so cars can better recognise pedestrians, other vehicles and obstacles on the road.  The deal created 30 jobs in Edinburgh and would allow ‘developers to focus on innovation.’

It’s predicted by John Quelch, a professor of marketing at Harvard Business School that in 20 years, 50 per cent of all cars will be fully automated.

Richards added, ‘This is a great new partnership that will provide us with both funding and specialist expertise.’

Foresight also invested £500,000 into gas grid solutions firm Utonomy last year.

Further reading on AI

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