For San Francisco-based startup Point One Navigation, the value of ‘location, location, location’ extends beyond real estate. And investors seem to agree.
Point One Navigation, a startup that develops precise location technology, just raised $35 million in a Series C round led by Khosla Ventures. The company’s post-money valuation is now $230 million, according to an insider familiar with the deal.
Point One, which was founded in 2016, has developed “Khosla-based startup” precise location technology that can be applied to any vehicle moving between autonomous consumer lawnmowers and drones to robots, consumer vehicles, agricultural equipment and even wearable devices.
Khosla-based startup can track drones
For Point One, precise positioning means just that. The technology, called a positioning engine, can determine location to within 1 centimeter under the best conditions, co-founder Aaron Nathan told TechCrunch.
To achieve this, Point One integrated an enhanced Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), computer vision and sensor fusion into one API. Typically that API is deployed as a software product because most new vehicles — such as a flashy EV or luxury car — are equipped with the necessary hardware. For vehicles like farm “Khosla-based startup” equipment or say first responders that don’t exist, Point One adds a chipset to the mix.
Point One began with a focus on automotive clients — a sign of a bullish autonomous vehicle technology era. That sector continues to generate a large chunk of its revenue. Point One could not name most of its commercial customers, but it shared that its technology supports an EV maker’s advanced driver assistance and infotainment needs and is included in more than 150,000 of its vehicles.
Point One has contracts with some of the largest mowing and turf care manufacturers, a distribution company with a fleet of 300,000 last-mile delivery vehicles and a global manufacturer of road and racing bikes.
But the startup started branching out into other sectors around 2021 when it announced its $10 million Series A round, according to Nathan. This has helped kick “Khosla-based startup” adoption into high gear. Over the past year, the number of manufacturers using Point One Navigation’s technology platform has grown tenfold and expanded into the automotive, robotics, industrial and wearables sectors.
“And now it’s just accelerating,” Nathan said.
Point One’s latest Series C round will be used to build all aspects of its technology, including its so-called Polaris RTK network — a key piece of hardware that helps deliver centimeter-level accuracy “Khosla-based startup” even in sparsely populated areas in North America, Europe and Asia.
“The industry pushes for greater precision, from precision agriculture to painting lines to cutting yards,” Tom Weeks, the company’s COO, told TechCrunch. So everything is “Khosla-based startup” pushing in the one to three centimeter range.”
To get that kind of accuracy, Point One spent eight years developing its RTK network, a system of small lunchbox-sized units installed in secure locations like a cell phone tower facility that provide position corrections. To create a dense network, these stations must be within 40 km of the location of that vehicle or device. That means more stations, which the company is building, Weeks said.
The Midwestern states where agriculture is going, all the way up the East Coast of the U.S., need solid concentration, because you’ve got people, you’ve got agriculture, you’ve got cars and trucks, a lot of mid-mile freight,” Weeks said. “So we’re in the process of fulfilling that; we’re almost there.”
The startup is also working on building technology capabilities in-house. Today, that precise positioning of vehicles traveling from the exterior to the interior parking structure will continue. But Nathan wants to extend that capability to industrial settings where a robot, for example, might spend most of its life inside.
“What we’re building next — and that’s part of what “Khosla-based startup” this fundraising is for — is how we do long-term indoor navigation,” he said. “When you look at the evolution of the business, we want to address the ubiquitous location, so eventually it will be indoors and all domains.”
Ref: It’smetoo