Applied Intuition Inc., a simulation startup that counts over a dozen large automakers as customers, has raised $250 million in a late-stage funding at a $6 billion valuation.

The company announced the Series E investment today. It said that the round was led by returning backers Lux Capital and Elad Gil. Additionally, Applied Intuition disclosed on the occasion that it’s profitable with “triple-digit percentage” annual revenue growth.

Autonomous vehicles use artificial intelligence to navigate public roads. The same is true for many ADAS, or advanced driver assistance system, modules. Such modules, which can be found in millions of smart cars, run partly autonomous driving software that automates tasks such as parking and lane centering.

Automakers hone their vehicles’ AI models by placing them in simulated driving environments. Those environments typically feature not only virtual roads but also AI-powered traffic. The lessons that a neural network picks up in simulation, such as how to maneuver around traffic cones, can be carried over to the real world.

Applied Intuition provides a suite of software tools for creating vehicle simulations. According to the company, its technology enables automakers to generate millions of miles of virtual roads. To speed up development, engineers can draw on a built-in asset library that includes virtual vehicles and road networks.

The company provides its core simulation features alongside a tool called Cloud Engine. According to the company, it uses Kubernetes to let customers run their virtual driving environments on major public clouds. The tool can run up to tens of thousands of simulations in parallel, which makes it possible to test a wide range of driving situations relatively quickly.

Training AI models is not the use case to which Applied Intuition’s software can be applied.

Before deploying a partly or fully autonomous vehicle on public roads, automakers evaluate its reliability on a test track. If the vehicle makes an incorrect driving decision during testing, engineers must replicate the conditions in which the decision was made to find the root cause and fix it. Applied Intuition’s software can be used to replicate AI navigation errors in a simulated environment.

The company also promises to ease a number of related tasks, allowing automakers to test a vehicle’s sensors by measuring how well they collect data on the virtual roads and cars within a simulation. Additionally, simulations can be used to evaluate how well a vehicle complies with safety regulations.

Since launching in 2017, Applied Intuition has built up an installed base that includes 18 of the world’s 20 largest automakers. The company says that it helps customers develop software for not only not only cars but also other vehicles spanning markets such as the agriculture and defense sectors.

It will use the proceeds from its latest funding round for product development. As part of the effort, the company said that it intends to make “significant investments” in generative AI. It will hire more machine learning engineers to support the effort. 

“Within the last few years, we’ve seen massive advances in artificial intelligence that will have groundbreaking impacts on the industries that Applied Intuition serves,” said co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Qasar Younis. “Our industry-leading vehicle software products will infuse AI technology to expand beyond our definitive ADAS and AD toolchain, which will exponentially accelerate the production of next-generation vehicles.”

Applied Intuition is the latest in a series of vehicle simulation startups to have raised funding recently. Inverted AI Inc., which provides AI-powered virtual vehicles for simulations, closed a $4 million funding round in December. Earlier, another market player called Foretellix Ltd. raised $42 million from a group of investors that included Nvidia Corp. and Volvo Car AB.

Photo: Applied Intuition