Startup Europe Partnership is a platform established by the European Commission in 2014 with an aim to scale up Europe’s startups through strategic partnerships with global corporations. Two of SEP’s founding partners, an open innovation advisory firm Mind the Bridge based in Italy and the United States and a British innovation foundation Nesta, hold the SEP Corporate Startup Stars annually to showcase the best models of corporate-startup collaboration.

SEP Corporate Startup Stars Awards has seven award categories including ‘Accelerator’, ‘Procurement’, ‘Investment’, ‘M&A’ and ‘Open Innovation Approach’. Among these, Samsung ranked first for the highest award – ‘SEP Europe’s Corporate Startup Stars’ – this year, acknowledged among local startups in the continent as the friendliest and the most rigorous supporter in terms of company acceleration, procurement and investments.

“Collaboration between established corporates and startups benefits them both. Startups get the resources and market insight to help them scale up, while their supporters are driven with innovation and cultural change,” commented Jyrki Tapani Katainen, the European Commission Vice President for Jobs, Growth, Investment and Competitiveness. “Organizations cooperating well should be recognized as trailblazers that can inspire others.”

Roberto Mauro, Managing Director Europe, Samsung Strategy & Innovation Center (Right) is receiving the SEP Top 1 Europe’s Corporate Startup Stars Awards from Jyrki Tapani Katainen, European Commission Vice-President (© European Union, 2018 / Source: EC – Audiovisual Service / Photo: Lukasz Kobus)

“The explosion of data and the revolution in core technologies is creating incredible opportunities in nearly every sector,” said Roberto Mauro, Managing Director of Europe at Samsung Strategy & Innovation Center. “By combining venture investments with Samsung’s vast technology ecosystem – spanning innovation, research, procurement, sales, and marketing through local, regional, and corporate channels – we can enable the next wave of innovators in Europe and around the world.”

In Europe, Samsung has been engaging with startups in ways that are uniquely tailored to each market – accelerating the development of innovative products and services in industries such as cybersecurity, healthcare, retail, banking, logistics, mobility, real estate, and education.

On the wider international stage, during the last two decades, Samsung Electronics has worked tirelessly to build a broad and deep engagement with a variety of startup communities – particularly those active in hardware, software and services, mobile communications, consumer electronics, and automotive industries. Last year, Samsung invested more than $200 million in 75 startups worldwide and expects the investments to continue to grow in the future. Global startups and companies have also been provided access to a spectrum of Samsung global venture platforms, including:

• Samsung Strategy & Innovation Center (SSIC): Global organization focused on driving the next generation of growth for Samsung Electronics in the new data economy, through innovation, investment, and mergers & acquisitions
• Samsung Catalyst Fund (SCF): Evergreen multi-stage venture capital fund that invests globally in strategic ideas for Samsung’s mobile, device solutions and consumer electronics groups. Investment spans across innovation in areas that include: artificial intelligence, smart factory and robotics, digital health, autonomous systems, and cloud and data infrastructure
• Samsung NEXT: Builds, grows and scales transformative software and services to complement Samsung’s global hardware footprint. A leading driver of Samsung’s transformation into an integrated hardware and software company, Samsung NEXT combines product development, investment, M&A and partnerships under one roof. Samsung NEXT operates an $150M fund to invest in early stage software and services startups
• Samsung Ventures: Early-to-late-stage investments that are relevant to the current and next generation of Samsung products and services
• Samsung Research: Collaborates with universities, research institutes, corporates and startups to drive innovation for Samsung’s Consumer Electronics and IT & Mobile businesses

It is Samsung’s plan to foster even deeper relationships with the innovation community through knowledge exchange, strategy discussions, deal flow presentations, and collaborations with companies funded through a variety of investments and commercialization efforts. Samsung will continue moving forward to strengthen and create more partnerships with startups across the world.

SEP Europe’s Corporate Startup Stars Awards 2018 participants at the ceremony (© European Union, 2018 / Source: EC – Audiovisual Service / Photo: Lukasz Kobus)

“We are thrilled to share that TetraVue has officially closed its largest round of funding to date,” said Paul Banks, Founder and President of TetraVue. “Our passionate team has dedicated their careers to researching and developing the technology that TetraVue is today and we plan to use this financial support to continue to deliver state of the art 3D vision technology to enable smart vision for smarter machines.”

TetraVue intends to make collecting high resolution 3D data and imagery simple and cost effective as autonomous cars become a reality within the next few years. It has been developing partnerships with car manufacturers, auto AI software developers, and other hardware makers to be an intricate part of what can only be described as the “eyes and brain” of self-driving vehicles.

“TetraVue is unparalleled to any other existing technologies in the three-dimensional Flash LIDAR space,” said Luis Llovera, Bosch Ventures Managing Director. “We see its technology as being key to the enhancement and development of the autonomous car industry, which will be the future of transportation as we know it.”

TetraVue’s Ultra High Definition resolution helps robust identification of unexpected and dangerous obstacles at 100s of meters that is not being done on cars today—and needed to reach true autonomy. As on-board computers will make split second decisions to adapt to road conditions and react to the unexpected, car vision and LIDAR systems will have to determine at a safe distance what the nature of the obstacle is accurately and instantly; distance alone scanned a few points at a time is insufficient. “TetraVue’s LIDAR gives cars perfect vision, and allows them to make better decisions” says Connie Sheng, Founding Managing Director at Nautilus Venture Partners. “Imagine the car being able to instantly determine if a black spot is a rock or a plastic bag.” Beyond distance, used as the current benchmark for LIDAR performance, high definition is the critical element to ensure optimal safety and operation on the roads.

For more information on how TetraVue works, its products for Vision for Things (VfT), and its plans for future developments, please visit: http://www.tetravue.com

About TetraVue

Founded in 2008, TetraVue’s Ultra High Resolution products take an entirely new approach to Flash LIDAR technology and is a product of several years of experimental research. TetraVue’s technology results in 2 million or more simultaneous distance measurements of ranges—greater than 200 meters in any weather conditions and utilizes orders of magnitude less power than competitors. This performance is optimal for the autonomous car industry, and TetraVue plans to miniaturize and commercialize its fully functioning prototype. As the visualization needs of businesses and consumers become more sophisticated, increasingly complex machines require a 3D depth vision for maximal efficiency. TetraVue’s 3D camera will also play a large role across industries such as enterprise level mapping and augmented reality.

About RBVC GmbH

Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH (RBVC) is the corporate venture capital company of the Bosch Group, a leading global supplier of technology and services. RBVC invests worldwide in innovative start-up companies at all stages of their development. Its investment activities focus on technology companies working in areas of business of current and future relevance for Bosch, above all, automation and electrification, energy efficiency, enabling technologies, and healthcare systems. RBVC also invests in services and business models that are relevant to the above-mentioned areas of business. Additional information is available at: www.rbvc.com