Swift Navigation, the San Francisco tech firm building centimeter-accurate GPS technology to power a world of autonomous vehicles, today announced that it has raised a $34 million Series B financing round led by Forest Baskett and Greg Papadopoulos of New Enterprise Associates (NEA), with participation from existing investors Eclipse and First Round Capital. To date, the company has raised a total of $47.6 million in funding.
Focused on building highly-precise, centimeter-accurate Global Navigation Satellite Solutions (GNSS) at affordable prices, Swift Navigation provides solutions to over 2,000 customers—including autonomous vehicles, precision agriculture, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), robotics, maritime, transportation/logistics and outdoor industrial applications. By moving GPS positioning from custom hardware to a flexible software-based receiver, Swift Navigation delivers Real Time Kinematics (RTK) GPS that is 100 times more accurate than traditional GPS found in a typical phone at a fraction of the cost of the competition.
“Swift Navigation is at the epicenter of some very exciting advancements in self-driving cars and autonomous robotics,” said Forest Baskett, PhD, General Partner at NEA. “NEA is thrilled to lead this round of financing, which will allow Swift to bring more innovative navigation products to market and sustain its rapid growth.”
With the influx of financial support, Swift Navigation plans to take customer deployments to scale while growing its team and investing in core engineering and R&D. The company looks forward to introducing additional next-generation products in 2017.
“We are proud to be working with Forest Baskett, Greg Papadopoulos and the whole NEA team. They are at the front edge, alongside Eclipse and First Round, in thinking about the future of autonomy,” said Timothy Harris, Co-Founder and CEO of Swift Navigation. “We are encouraged by the tremendous market opportunity for precision navigation that is required by autonomous vehicles, and are grateful to our investors who share our vision and whose support validates our efforts in tackling hard problems in the changing landscape of GPS.”
Swift’s growth is fueled by high demand for its products, including Piksi® Multi, a multi-band, multi-constellation, high-precision GNSS receiver that enables convergence times measured in seconds, not minutes and delivers enhanced availability even in the most challenging environments, such as urban canyons. Piksi Multi represents a revolution in advanced precision GNSS capabilities for the mass market and was built from the ground up to meet the needs of demanding applications like autonomous driving. In May, Swift announced Duro™, a ruggedized version of Piksi Multi. Built to be tough, Duro’s IP67-rated, cast aluminum enclosure can withstand submersion in a meter of water and is protected against weather, extreme temperatures, moisture, dust and other environmental challenges that can occur in long-term outdoor deployments. Duro is one of the most rugged GNSS sensors available. Visit Swift Navigation’s online store at swiftnav.com/store to learn more.
ABOUT SWIFT NAVIGATION
Swift Navigation, Inc. was founded in 2012 to make GPS positioning technology more accurate and affordable. Today Swift Navigation has gained a reputation for defining a new category of GNSS systems as the industry’s first low-cost, high accuracy real-time kinematics (RTK) receiver. Its GPS and GNSS positioning products are available a fraction of the price of the competition and deliver 100 times better accuracy than the GPS in a cell phone. Swift Navigation’s technology benefits a multitude of industries and applications—including autonomous vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), precision agriculture, robotics, surveying and space. With its innovation and technology honored by Inc.’s 2016 and Forbes 2017 30 Under 30 lists, Swift Navigation is enabling a world where fields farm themselves, drones fly safely and autonomous transportation can take you home.
ABOUT NEA
New Enterprise Associates, Inc. (NEA) is a global venture capital firm focused on helping entrepreneurs build transformational businesses across multiple stages, sectors and geographies. With over $19 billion in cumulative committed capital since the firm’s founding in 1977, NEA invests in technology and healthcare companies at all stages in a company’s lifecycle, from seed stage through IPO. The firm’s long track record of successful investing includes more than 210 portfolio company IPOs and more than 360 acquisitions.