Technology

As we inch closer to building increasingly autonomous cars, the complexities that these vehicles will present as programmable hardware are increasing, with some 250 applications ranging from cameras to navigation controls to weather sensors running on a typical high performance system today. Now, a startup that is building a system to help optimise that and let all of those vendors work together in a neutral way is announcing some funding to continue its growth. Silexica, a startup based out of Cologne, Germany, that has developed a set of tools to help map and optimise a wide range of applications across multicore processors — specifically the kinds of applications and computers that power self-driving cars — has raised $18 million.

The Series B is led by EQT Ventures, the newish firm that sits under the PE firm EQT Partners, based out of Stockholm. Existing investorsMerus Capital, Paua Ventures, Seed Fonds Aachen (Silexica originally spun out of the University of Aachen) and DSA Invest all also participated in this round. The company has raised $28 million to date.

The funding, SilexicaCEO Maximilian Odendahl (who co-founded the team withJohannes Emigholz andWeihua Sheng)told TechCrunch, will be used not just to increase its optimisation features — allowing for an increasing variety of services and functionalities to be monitored and diagnosed — but also to add a cloud component to how it monitors and processes information on a vehicle.

&Currently we are an on-prem solution, but we are building cloud platform,& he said. The company is also working on a simulator, so that multiple partners can work together on one platform to test their services and how they perform together. Its customers today includeDenso, Toyota, Fujitsu and Huawei — underscoring the range of potential buyers of its tech.

The simulator points to one of the key reasons why companies like Silexica are emerging and attracting interest from the autonomous car industry. In large part, these systems are being built using components and technology from dozens or more vendors on top of the car company itself. But data, as people like to say, is the new oil, so what a vendor gathers from its specific sensors and services becomes valuable training information for better services. This means many of them are very guarded about what they share with others, and why, in turn, it is valuable to have an independent platform where that data mixes and is &seen& by no one else.

The other area where SilexicaSLX tools are notable is that they work in real time to provide their diagnostics. Today, we&ve already seen some dreadful accidents involving autonomous vehicles not behaving in the way that we would have expected, resulting in fatalities. Inevitably, there will be more times that these systems don&t work the way that we think they will, and so any service that can improve how applications communicate and respond to each other will be increasingly essential — and in some cases fundamental — both to make the systems work better, and to make sure not just that vendor trust is in place, but that user trust is, too.

&In their quest to solve one of the largest challenges of the post-PC era, we believe Maximilian, Johannes and the rest of the team can steerSilexicainto becoming one of the most important technology companies of this decade,& saidTed Persson, Design Partner and investment advisor to EQT Ventures who will be joiningSilexica‘s Board.

There will be other approaches taken to solving this problem, too. Given that we are still at a relatively nascent stage of the race for self-driving vehicles &Odendahl estimates that fully-autonomous might not in use until 2025, and that is possibly optimistic — it will be interesting to see how this aspect of the stack plays out.

Updated with correction to date for autonomous car rollouts, which should have said 2025, not 20-25 years.

Herea tale of two organizations. When it comes to banking, I can walk up to an ATM anywhere in the world, slide in a card, hit a couple of buttons, and walk away with cash, often in less than 20-30 seconds. Itmagical, but so quotidian that we easily forget the vast technical infrastructure that powers this experience.

Now, try to walk into a government agency to get service done. You often need to get a ticket and wait, often for an hour or more. During a recent trip to the New York Department of Motor Vehicles, I ended up getting sent to four different lines, all of which were independent, and because of a computer malfunction, the whole place was being run by people pointing and shouting.

The dichotomy between those two experiences is, fundamentally, a difference in procurement.

Before you run to get coffee (or whiskey, for that matter), let me say this: procurement is the sort of extremely boring but absolutely vital task that is both the barrier but also the opportunity for making the DMV and other government services more like the ATM. New initiatives around the world are trying to rebuild procurement from the ground up, with entrepreneurship at their core. One initiative I&ve spent time with recently is CivTech, based in Scotland.

CivTech, a component of the digital directorate of the Scottish government, is a sort of two-sided marketplace connecting startup founders with government agencies. Agencies sponsor challenges, and startups compete to be the best at solving that challenge, potentially winning hundreds of thousands of dollars and a reference customer. Those startups are organized into batches, with the program launching its third batch shortly (applications are due July 2nd).

Alexander Holt, head of CivTech, is an energetic true believer that startup innovation can transform government services. For him, the key question for public agencies is &how do you procure what you don&t know exists&

In the classical model of procurement, an agency drafts a Request for Proposals (RFP) that spells out exactly what the agency is looking for from vendors. Then, whoever bids lowest on the RFP will usually get the contract. The disconnect is that agencies rarely know what solutions they need, and Holt says that often leads to disaster. &We are writing specs that we don&t understand, and we are looking at the solution, not looking at the problem,& he said.

Holt wants to completely change that process. Instead of presenting a solution and asking for implementations, he wants agencies to present problems and keep an &open mind& about what a solution might look like. His message to agencies is &don&t give us a solution you think you need, but give us a problem you think you have.&

Then — and this is a major difference from traditional procurement — he encourages agencies to select several teams (usually three) to build pilot projects that could solve the problem. The idea is to get a better sense of what solutions exist, and also learn how the companies function. &You get an understanding of their capacity and more importantly, their culture, and that is really important,& Holt explained.

After a few weeks of building, the agency can choose to work with one company, and help them launch their product. The model is fast, since startups are iterating rapidly in competition with each other, but also cheap. As Holt said, &The other benefit for the challenge sponsor is that the amount of time that the companies are putting in versus what you&re paying them is 10 times cheaper,& than conventional procurement models.

CivTech wants to educate the next generation of civic entrepreneurs

For startups participating in the program, CivTech hopes it can provide them with legitimacy and a first customer for their business. By the end of the program, &you have a first reference client, which is the government, that allows you to keep your equity 100% and your IP 100%,& Holt said. Plus, the program connects its startups to citizens to accelerate the innovation feedback loop.

While the team has a bold vision, the program had humble beginnings. The first cohort launched in June 2016 within days of Brexit, which radically redefined the future of the United Kingdom and Scotland along with it. The program also faced its own procurement challenge around finding a home, eventually signing a lease for its first batch less than an hour before launch.

The program has grown rapidly since its inception. It had just 6 challenges during its first batch, but this time around has 10 challenges from a diverse set of agencies, including Scotlandhealth service and illicit trade agencies.

Transforming procurement and therefore government won&t happen overnight, but a change in mentality is the key to imprinting entrepreneurship and startup culture on bureaucrats. Holt said that his message is always consistent: &show me the law, not the rule.& Laws are much more flexible than we think, and changing procurement doesn&t start in the legislature, but in the acquisition office of every public agency.

Indiafood delivery race is hotting up after Swiggy, one of the startups vying forpole position, landed $210 million in new capital for expansion and joined the billion-dollar startup unicorn club.

The investment is led by existing backer Naspers, the media conglomerate famous for an early bet on Tencent in China, and new investor DST Global. Others taking part in the round include returning investor ChinaMeituan Dianping and (another new investor) Coatue Management.

The deal takes Swiggy valuation past the $1 billion mark for the first time. Sources with knowledge of negotiations told TechCrunch that it values the company at around $1.3 billion. Thereperhaps not a tonne of surprise around todayannouncement since it has been rumored in the Indian press for some time, with Economic Times first reporting on it in April.

This Series G investment comes just months after Naspers and Meituan Dianping invested $100 million into Swiggy in February. The new round takes Swiggy to over $465 million raised from investors to date, making it Indiamost-capitalized food delivery startup. Nearest competitor Zomato has raised some $440 million from investors that include AlibabaAnt Financial affiliate,Sequoia Capital and Temasek, but its business also includes markets outside of India, whereas Swiggyis firmly focused on its homeland. (Zomato was most recently valued at $1.1 billion.)

Swiggy claims to cover 35,000 restaurants with a delivery fleet of over 40,000. The company isn&t giving financials at this point, but it said that it has seen &a three-fold increase in revenues in the last financial year.&

The company isn&t saying in specifics how it will use the new capital, but a representative told TechCrunch that the plan is to investinextending its reach to new locations in India and also to build out its logistics network to better serve customers.

&With this investment, we will continue to widen Swiggyofferings, along with bolstering our capabilities and plugging the gaps in the on-demand delivery ecosystem,& added Swiggy CEO Sriharsha Majetyin a statement.

In addition, no doubt the business is capital intensive given the competition, so you&d imagine that a significant amount of money is needed to offset the monthly burn rate that Swiggy and others chalk up.

Beyond Zomato, Swiggycompetitors also include ride-hailing companies Ola — which acquired the FoodPanda India business last year — and Uber, which has offered its Uber Eats service in India for over a year. A smaller player (but equally big-name) is Google, which launched its Areofood delivery service in India in April 2017.