The deep tech startup receives a hefty cash injection for the further development of its language assistant for motorists.
Fresh capital for German Autolabs
The Berlin based deep tech startup has collected seven million euros in a recent round of financing. New investors include nbr Tech Ventures, VC Fonds Technologie Berlin and coparion, which is managed by IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH. The previous main investor Target Partners also participates in the round.
The money is intended to drive the European wide launch of the digital language assistant Chris, launched in 2018. And to accelerate the further development of the underlying voice AI platform for the automotive industry.
Production of retrofittable language assistance hardware
“When we first invested in German Autolabs, nobody really saw the dimension and growth potential of language assistants. In the meantime, everyone is aware that this is a paradigm shift in the interaction models. Autolab’s timing is near perfect to play a leading role in this exciting development, “says Dr. Berthold von Freyberg of Target Partners the investment.
Founded in 2016 by Holger G. Weiss and Patrick Weissert, Autolabs produces Chris language assistant hardware, which can be retrofitted to any vehicle. In the long term, German Autolabs plans to provide the automotive industry and related industries such as fleet operators and insurers with tailor-made and independent assistance solutions with a hybrid offline or online dialogue management system and dedicated automotive applications.
No competition with Amazon and Google
“With the growing success of language assistants, the need for vertical solutions in the automotive sector will increase. Important distinctions in this area are data security, the very special application in the vehicle as well as the possibility to address the own customer directly. We do not see ourselves as competitors to horizontal actors like Amazon or Google. Our approach can be integrated vertically and absolutely complementarily. Since the production cycles in the automotive industry are traditionally too long to iteratively develop and train the voice KI, our retrofit approach is one of the great advantages of our strategy, “said Holger G. Weiss, co-founder and CEO of German Autolabs.
Also published on Medium.