Brodmann17, a six-year-old Israeli startup that developed software for computer vision applications for automated vehicles, is the latest Startup Nation victim of the worldwide financial crisis. The company is shutting down entirely, letting go of 30 employees.
Brodmann17 is shuttering at a time when signs seem to be pointing that we have come to the end of the tunnel for the current state of high inflation. Gasoline and oil prices have already come down and the West is seeing a drop in the rate of inflation.
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The continuing crisis may not have caused Brodmann17’s downfall, but it certainly did not help things. Brodmann17 started out with $2.5 million in seed funding and then in 2019 the company raised $11 million in a Series A funding round led by OurCrowd.
Founded in 2016 by CEO Adi Pinhas, Amir Alush, and Assaf Mushinsky, Brodmann17 developed AI that the company thought would revolutionize safety in mobility. The company boasted that its computer-vision-centered technology saves 95% of computing power.
“This huge saving in cost has brought AI for the very first time to new verticals including mass-market passenger vehicles, video telematics and micro-mobility,” declared Brodmann17. Unfortunately, the company was apparently unable to monetize this.
Brodmann17 said that its AI is based on deep learning neural networks that extract all possible information from a video to make the entire ADAS software smarter.
The company was named after Professor Brodmann, who organized the human brain into 52 regions. Area 17 is the primary visual cortex. Over a century later, Brodmann17s’ deep learning scientists tried to make this research more relevant than ever by creating the digital version of Area 17. But, it seems, they did not get a chance to fulfill this dream.
“In the past six years, we developed in Brodmann17 AI based vision-solutions for the mobility market. I was fortunate to work with an outstanding multi-disciplinary team who came up with some of the most groundbreaking and award-winning products for automotive, video-telematics, and micro-mobility,” said Adi Pinhas. “As we had to shut down Brodmann17 today, we will not be able to bring these products to the mass market as we hoped, we do get comfort that our innovation will hopefully influence the market thinking and others will proceed in the mission of creating safer mobility to everyone.”
Pinhas went on to say that they founded Brodmann17 with a “clear vision to revolutionize AI thinking and to demonstrate how AI can be a part of everyday devices.”
He declared that the company did succeed, at least, in demonstrating “uncompromising AI quality on low-cost, low-power platforms that can proliferate everywhere.”
