Advanced radar startup Bitsensing today announced its Series B funding round, raising $25 million from investors including the Korea Development Bank, HL Mando Corp., Industrial Bank of Korea, Aju Capital, Life Asset Management, and SCL Investment. The company says the investment, led by prominent venture capital firms and strategic investors, underscores its pioneering role in the radar technology industry and will propel it toward its global growth and innovation goals to bring “radar everywhere.”

The funding will be used to scale its operations, invest in research and development, and explore new market opportunities. The company plans to expand its team, enhance its product portfolio, and establish strategic partnerships to drive growth and deliver value to its customers.

“We truly believe in the transformative role our cutting-edge radar solutions will have across a host of industries and want to make ‘radar everywhere’ a reality,” said Dr. Jae-Eun Lee, CEO of Bitsensing. “With this new investment, we’ll be focused on the further development of our technology, expanding our product offerings, and enhancing our global market presence.”

Founded in 2018 in South Korea by Lee, Bitsensing has raised a total of $52 million in funding including a $10 million Series A in 2022. The company has been expanding the use of its high-performance, automotive-grade radar to improve safety, efficiency, and convenience across a variety of applications such as autonomous driving, smart cities, and health tech.

In the automotive sector, the company’s imaging radar is being developed to transform the way the autonomous vehicle understands its surroundings by providing high-resolution 4D imaging. With a range coverage of more than 300 m (984 ft), its unique array patterning technique and radar signal processing algorithms are engineered to deliver ultimate reliability. In addition, its advanced corner radar provides a surround detection solution for autonomous vehicle systems with a claimed 50% advancement in detection range compared to conventional radar.

For smart cities, Bitsensing’s TIMOS (traffic insight monitoring sensor) is an all-in-one traffic sensor that integrates an AI computing device into an ITS (intelligent transport system) solution. It provides visibility and intelligence across 12 lanes of traffic, vehicle class detection (i.e., cars, motorcycles, etc.), and the ability to identify a host of safety issues including jaywalking, wrong-way driving, speed violations, and stationary vehicles. It is currently being used across six countries, including on South Korea’s Nonsan-Cheonan Expressway.

The company’s health technology radar is being applied to application services for digital health focused on sleep care. Its radar monitors sleep quality, apnea events, limb movements, and provides data analysis like sleep scores, summaries, and lifestyle recommendations.

In the past year, Bitsensing has achieved several significant milestones that it says cement its position as a leader in the radar technology sector and has been designated as a national core technology company, highlighting its critical role in advancing technological innovation in South Korea.

In February, Bitsensing announced the appointment of NH Investment & Securities, one of the largest securities firms in Korea, as the lead underwriter for its upcoming Initial Public Offering on the KOSDAQ market slated for 2025. The company also announced it had generated KRW12 billion (about $10 million) in revenue in 2023 and its autonomous driving solution was undergoing further development for mass production in collaboration with a global automotive Tier 1 supplier.

The company said it will also focus on developing its next-gen radar platform called RPaaS (Radar-Platform-as-a-Service), which provides a total radar solution in a platform format said to offer a significant advantage over traditional radar development methods. By providing an SoC (system-on-chip) solution that includes the core software required for radar development, it says the RPaaS enables customers to quickly and easily deploy high-performance radar systems without the need to build their own processes, significantly reducing development time and costs.