The race to produce the first commercially available self-driving cars is heating up, and today Silicon Valley startup Drive.ai took a big leap forward by closing a $50 million Series B funding round and snagging AI pioneer Andrew Ng for its board.

The funding round was led by New Enterprise Associates, and it included participation from new investor GGV Capital and existing investor Northern Light Venture Capital, which led the company’s $12 million Series A round.

Founded in 2015 by former lab partners from Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Lab, Drive.ai specializes in applying deep learning to self-driving car technology. While most companies working on self-driving cars use deep learning for certain tasks, Drive.ai says that it is unique in using deep learning for all aspects of its technology.

Andrew Ng, a professor of computer science at Stanford and former chief scientist at Baidu Inc., said that Drive.ai’s focus on deep learning gives it a competitive edge over rivals.

“The cutting-edge of autonomous driving has shifted squarely to deep learning,” said Ng. “Even traditional autonomous driving teams have ‘sprinkled on’ some deep learning, but Drive.ai is at the forefront of leveraging deep learning to build a truly modern autonomous driving software stack.”

In addition to Ng, NEA Chairman Carmen Chang will also be joining Drive.ai’s board. Chang said in a statement that self-driving transportation is “one of the most exciting and important innovations of our time,” and she said that Drive.ai has “a clear leadership position” in the development of self-driving tech.

The technology for self-driving cars is becoming more and more real every day, and now one of the biggest hurdles for the autonomous vehicle revolution is not the “how?” but the “how much?” This is especially true for businesses that own fleets of vehicles, which would be too expensive to replace all at once. Drive.ai is looking to solve this problem by producing retrofit kits that allow businesses to convert their existing fleets into self-driving cars rather than having to buy all new vehicles.

In a blog post, Drive.ai said that its kits will make it easier for more businesses to make the leap into autonomous vehicles, which the startup said will “empower businesses and make their goods and services more accessible than ever.”

Drive.ai says that it will deploy its kits on existing business fleets and testing its first pilot cars later this year.

Photo: Drive.ai