Deeptech

Q2 202423.05.2024

Autonomous Vehicles (Q2 2024)

Picture of Federico Scolari

Federico Scolari

at Sifted

When interviewed by Sifted in September 2022, Bruno Mendes Da Silva — CEO and cofounder of Heex Technologies, #1 on the Scout list — told us that self-driving tech wasn’t quite ready to hit the roads in Europe. “It’s a mentality issue. If investors hold back, what about the end user?” he said. Fast forward two years, some things have started to change for the better.

Keen investors have slowly started to bet bigger on the sector — London-based Wayve raised a $1.1bn megaround earlier this year, followed by Rimac-backed P3 mobility’s €100m Series A. Both companies joined the likes of Einride, Conigital and Envisics in the select cohort of well-funded European AV startups.

But early-stage funding is still relatively stale, and low Scout scores at the bottom end of the cohort outline a difficult reality for young AV ventures looking to scale. Only $4.7m has been raised by pre-Series B startups in 2024 so far, against $56.8m in 2023 and $126m in 2022, as businesses struggle to distinguish themselves from leading competitors and legacy automotive giants fail to offer clear investment strategies.

Either way, AV companies have made a much anticipated switch to software, or at least some elements of it. Data management and infrastructure startups have increased in number and expanded their focus, training vehicles on both synthetic datasets and on thousands of kilometres on the road. With costs for sensors and other hardware components coming down and regulations catching up, Europe can expect to move at unprecedented speeds on the back of powerful AI tools.

20 startups to watch

Sifted score
8.35
-
Heex Technologies
Strong investor(s)
Serial founder(s)
- Year founded
  2019
- HQ
  Paris, France
- Latest round
  Seed
  €3m / Jan 2023
- Total funding
  €5.9m
View company profile
Sifted score
8.14
-
Provizio
Strong investor(s)
Serial founder(s)
- Year founded
  2019
- HQ
  Limerick, Ireland
- Latest round
  Seed
  €5.6m / Nov 2020
- Total funding
  €8.1m
View company profile
Sifted score
7.8
-
Fernride
Strong investor(s)
Serial founder(s)
Hiring
- Year founded
  2019
- HQ
  Munich, Germany
- Latest round
  Series A
  €17.8m / Sep 2023
- Total funding
  €63.4m
View company profile
Sifted score
7.53
-
P3 mobility
Hiring
- Year founded
  2019
- HQ
  Zagreb, Croatia
- Latest round
  Series A
  €100m / Feb 2024
- Total funding
  €279.5m
View company profile
Sifted score
6.07
-
Milla Group
Strong investor(s)
- Year founded
  2018
- HQ
  Meudon, France
- Latest round
  Early VC
  €15m / Jun 2023
- Total funding
  €15m
View company profile

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