Sydney-based Baraja, which makes a Spectrum-Scan LIDAR with no moving parts, raises $31M Series B led by Blackbird Ventures, after $32M Series A two years ago — Lidar companies across the planet are going SPAC, but Baraja isn’t in a hurry to go public.
Lidar companies across the planet are going SPAC, but Baraja isn’t in a hurry to go public. The Australian lidar maker has raised a $31 million B round to continue the deployment and development of its “unique and ingenious” imaging system, with participation beyond the usual VC suspects.
Baraja’s lidar uses what the company calls Spectrum-Scan, letting physics do the hard work of directing the light. By passing its laser through a prism, different wavelengths of light go in different directions — and when it comes back, it takes the same path. Actually it’s a bit more complicated than that.
The company hasn’t been lying still since then, even though the most obvious application of lidar — autonomous vehicles — hasn’t exactly taken off in the meantime. As co-founder and CEO Federico Collarte told me back in 2020 of the lidar industry, “if you don’t differentiate, you die.” And Baraja has done so not just with its tech but its approach to the market.
Lidar, it turns out, is actually useful in a lot of industries, but most lidar units contain highly complex mechanical elements that can be affected by heat, cold and other environmental factors. Not so much Baraja, which has only one moving part (and that very slowly and steadily, somewhere in the optics) and can withstand intense conditions for a long time.
The next year, they asserted, will be a major one for Tier 1 suppliers and others racing to level 4 autonomy. Perhaps that’s why so many lidar companies opted to go public via SPAC in the last one. But that’s not the plan for Baraja, at least for now.
“It’s something we’re keeping an eye on,” said Collarte. “But we’re not in a rush.”
In addition to the VCs mentioned above and Hitachi Construction Machinery, the following investors joined the round: Regal Funds Management, Perennial Value Management and InterValley Ventures.
Comment Below and share this article to your friends to let them know about latest news and info visit Leedstelegraph.co.uk