Venture Capital

Point One Launches Out of Stealth, Closes $10 Million Series A

SAN FRANCISCO — Point One Navigation, a provider of precision location technology, has launched out of stealth mode and closed a $10 million Series A round of funding. The round was led by UP.Partners, with participation from existing investors including BOLT, IA Ventures and Ludlow Ventures.

Point One Navigation’s API is a helpful solution for automotive OEMs, trucking companies, drone manufacturers, heavy equipment, delivery services and consumer electronics that rely on precise location for safe and effective operation. The company’s technology enables centimeter-level global accuracy by combining augmented GNSS, computer vision, and sensor fusion in a powerful yet easy to use API compatible with a wide variety of existing platforms.

“Precise location is key for safe and effective operations across all areas of the mobility and transportation – from automobiles and drones to trucks and heavy machinery,” said the co-founder and managing partner of UP.Partners, Ben Marcus. “The team at Point One Navigation is solving a real challenge, combining unparalleled technical chops with proactive solutions for the quickly evolving moving world.”

For companies looking to link digital capabilities to the physical world, Point One Navigation saves years of development time by delivering a trusted full stack solution. The system features sensor fusion algorithms that are portable to any architecture and self-calibrate to enable peak performance on real-world deployments, right out of the box. Point One Navigation is the only provider to bundle corrected GNSS signals, proprietary sensor fusion algorithms and advanced computer vision into a comprehensive solution. Each element is built on open standards, allowing customers to select the optimum solution set for their particular use case.

Point One Navigation consists of three key offerings:

  1. Polaris is a GNSS correction service unlocking more than 10cm of global accuracy with a coast-to-coast footprint and a variety of connectivity options including delivery over cellular and L-Band. The network is purpose-built for automotive and robotics customers and includes advanced anti-jam, interference mitigation, end to end security and automatic integrity monitoring.
  2. FusionEngine is a portable, tightly coupled, multi-frequency GNSS/INS engine with best-in-class dead reckoning. It combines data from multiple sensors to achieve high accuracy and resilience to extended blockages and delivers a confidence signal so upstream services know when the position solution can be trusted.
  3. V-MAP is Point One Navigation’s advanced computer vision solution which turns ordinary vehicles into a mapping fleet. It uses commodity cameras to run efficient, unsupervised scene reconstruction algorithms to support globally registered map construction. When deployed across a fleet, V-MAP enables centimeter level positioning in all environments including urban canyons and parking structures.

“Point One Navigation’s full suite of offerings enable precise location on anything that moves in the real world. We’re thrilled to be working with a group of investment partners who understand that the future of mobility is tied to how well machines can precisely orient themselves, enabling broader and safer applications for autonomous technology,” said Aaron Nathan, CEO and Co-founder, Point One Navigation.

To enable customer evaluations, Point One Navigation offers the Atlas development kit. Atlas is a reference platform that can be integrated into production solutions and includes an automotive-grade multi-frequency GNSS receiver, a 64-bit ARM quad core processor, and built-in cellular modem with SIM card. Atlas can also serve as a complete solution for fleets in OEM development, delivery, municipal, private, and other rapid deploy applications.