Volvo Cars Tech Fund Invests in Israeli AI Startup

Anis

02 May 2023 at 03:15 PM

Share via

The all-new Volvo EX90

Volvo Cars announced a strategic investment in CorrActions, an Israeli deep tech brain monitoring AI startup that has created a technology that the automaker believes will "disrupt brain activity monitoring and may help us understand drivers even better." Based on micro muscle movements that reflect brain activity, the AI-powered software can detect abnormalities in the cognitive state of drivers and passengers. Using existing sensors, such as those in the steering wheel, such movements can indicate a variety of cognitive symptoms, such as a driver who is distracted, intoxicated, or overly tired.

After testing their software, the Volvo Cars Tech Fund, its corporate venture capital arm, is leading CorrActions' latest funding round and plans to continue collaborating. "We aim to be the strategic partner of choice for exciting startups that can help boost our position as a tech leader in our industry," fund head Alexander Petrofski said.

Volvo Cars said in a statement: “CorrActions piqued our interest because they clearly try to solve the same issues as our safety engineers. Our decades of research teach us that distraction and tiredness are facts of life, and that you may not always be at your best when driving, for whatever reason. And in traffic, it takes only a few seconds for the unthinkable to happen. “The CorrActions technology has the potential to be a highly relevant complement to our future safety systems. As a result, we’ve decided to take a stake in CorrActions to support the further development and commercialisation of its technology.

The Volvo XC90.

“The investment made by our Tech Fund is part of a Series A funding round by CorrActions. Further financial details will not be disclosed.” CorrActions said it “enables automotive manufacturers to understand drivers’ and passengers’ cognitive symptoms such as fatigue, inattention, anxiety, alcohol, motion sickness, drugs influence, etc with high accuracy, using data that is already available in vehicles without any changes to hardware.”