Phiar提供
“We can confirm that Google has acquired Phiar. We’re excited to welcome the Phiar team as we continue to invest in building great in-car experiences for drivers and automakers,” according to Google spokesperson.
Phair combined the Spatial-AI engine and the Mobility AR Engine to bring perception and intelligence to automotive navigation, by enabling vehicles to understand the environment better in real-time for intelligent navigation, smart parking, HD mapping, vision-based live road detections, and traffic conditions.
It is known that the automotive industry is hard to break into and usually needs a long period of POC, but Phiar already proved their product’s capabilities by winning several POC deals with tier-1 automotive OEMs(Original Equipment Manufacturer) like Panasonic and partnered with leading maps and navigation vendors such as TomTom and Telenav.
Phiar Technologies, founded by Harvard postdoc AI researcher Chen-Ping Yu and led by former Google Android Automotive Hardware Platform manager Gene Karshenboym, now the CEO of Phiar, has closed a $USD 12M Series A last year. The investors include State Farm Ventures Cambridge Mobile Telematics, Telenav, Norwest Venture Partners, The Venture Reality Fund, and GFR Fund.