By Jane Lanhee Lee
OAKLAND, California (Reuters) - Silicon Valley automotive ethernet chip startup Ethernovia Inc said on Monday it had raised $64 million in a Series A funding round including Porsche Automobil Holding SE, Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) Ventures, VentureTech Alliance and others.
As automakers pivot to electric vehicles with more driver assistance functions, they are revamping the electronics to eliminate dozens of cables that crisscross the car linking up over 100 microchips. Instead, they are building a central computer to control everything from camera and radar sensors to the windows and the entertainment dashboard.
Ramin Shirani, Ethernovia's co-founder and CEO, said he started the company in 2018 to build a single ethernet network in the car that would be the backbone for these new vehicles.
"We're not the brains of the car. We're not the sensors of the car. But anything that connects the brains to the sensors, that's where we are," Shirani told Reuters.
Ethernovia has created a family of ethernet chips and software that help simplify the electronics architecture of the car, he said.
The company said that the funding would be used to continue developing the products and to build up a team for marketing, sales and customer support. It declined to share the latest company valuation.