Autonomous vehicle software startup Applied Intuition has closed a $300 million secondary sale just four months after raising a $250 million Series E round, yet another sign of how white-hot the investment scene is for artificial intelligence companies.
The secondary round adds Fidelity Management & Research Company to an already-stacked lineup of investors in the automotive AI startup, which includes Lux Capital’s Bilal Zuberi, Elad Gil, Andreessen Horowitz, and Mary Meeker’s growth fund Bond. Some of those existing investors participated in the round, which allowed current and former employees — as well as early backers — to sell their equity.
Founded in 2017, Applied Intuition makes software that other companies use to develop and test their own autonomous vehicle solutions for cars, or other vehicles like planes. That involves creating simulations that lets automakers evaluate their perception stack and vehicle behavior systems. Applied Intuition also makes software that helps customers more efficiently wade through large volumes of data related to autonomous driving.
Applied Intuition co-founder Qasar Younis told TechCrunch in March that he wants his company to be the “first call” when automakers or defense companies have a software or AI problem to solve. The startup says it already has deals with “18 of the top 20 automakers” including General Motors, Toyota, and Volkswagen, and with AV startups Gatik, Motional and Kodiak.
The oversubscribed secondary round comes at a time when investors are still pouring billions of dollars into generative AI startups, according to Crunchbase data shared with TechCrunch. In the first half of 2024, more than 250 startups in the space have raised a total of $12.3 billion.
Secondary sales have also been hot in general as the IPO market dried up for tech startups, with the market for them growing from around $35 billion in 2017 to an estimate of around $138 billion for 2023, according to data from Industry Ventures.
