Motus Ventures is a seed venture capital fund and business accelerator focusing on innovation in the Transportation Industry and Internet of Things.  Transportation is one of the oldest and largest businesses in the world and greatly in need of innovative solutions that improve safety, reduce congestion, energy usage and pollution, increase efficiency and resource utilization, provide entertainment, and reduce costs.   A combination of recent technology shifts and emerging consumer trends – internet connected cars, vehicle to vehicle communications, crowd sourcing and resource sharing - have opened up a world of new opportunities for innovation in Transportation.  Motus Ventures aims to generate superior returns for its investors by providing the funding and resources needed to establish new innovative businesses that capitalize on these new opportunities.

Motus Ventures

Khosla Ventures invests in companies that are bold, early, and impactful. The firm was started in 2004 by Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, to provide venture assistance to entrepreneurs. Khosla Ventures invests in a range of areas including AI, climate, sustainability, enterprise, consumer, fintech, digital health, medtech and diagnostics, therapeutics, and frontier technology.

Khosla Ventures

Thyra Global manages private equity funds that invest in the technology, consumer, and real estate sectors.

Thyra Global Management

Western Technology Investment is a venture capital firm that specializes in offering acquisition financing to revenue-generating firms. The firm provides debt and lease financing to venture capital backed technology companies.

Western Technology Investment

SAIC Venture Capital Corporation is a venture capital investment arm of SAIC, Inc. It specializes in investments in seed, startup, early stage, and mid stage companies. The firm seeks to hold equity investments in publicly-traded and private emerging technology companies. It prefers to make balance sheet investments. SAIC Venture Capital Corporation was founded in 2000 and is based in Las Vegas, Nevada.

SAIC Venture Capital

Rising Tide their technological advancements in big data analytics, computer-aided design, optical sensors, mobile applications in vertical markets, community-connected networks, and services.

Rising Tide

Autotech Ventures is a venture capital firm that manages more than $400 million to invest in start-ups that aim to generate financial returns in the vast $3 trillion ground transportation industry. Connected, autonomous, shared and electrified vehicles and related mobility services have created tectonic shifts in the incumbent ground transportation industry. Vehicle manufacturers, parts suppliers, dealerships, repair shops, parking operators, ground logistics firms, and road infrastructure providers are all being impacted by ground transportation startups. Autotech Ventures provides startup companies with 1) capital to execute on their business plan, 2) access to its industry contacts - including dozens of ground transportation corporate investors who together represent a global market capitalization of over $500 billion dollars, 3) up-to-the-minute market intelligence on the ground transport landscape, 4) support in recruiting ground transportation industry talent, and 5) fundraising support to raise additional capital from other financially-motivated investors and strategic investors. Start-ups typically innovate quickly then scale slowly, while corporations typically innovate slowly then scale quickly. Autotech Ventures brings startups and corporations together to bridge this gap and build a new transportation future.

Autotech Ventures

Reshape is a next-generation investor in technology-enabled companies that need real estate to scale.

Reshape

Bold Capital Partners is an early-stage venture capital firm investing in life sciences, healthcare, and frontier tech companies.

Bold Capital Partners

letters Capital is a private investment firm focused on venture capital.

letters Capital

DENSO is a supplier of advanced automotive technology, systems and components for major automakers. They are committed to making the world a better place through their world-first products and technologies.

Denso

NTT DOCOMO Ventures is the venture capital arm of NTT DOCOMO, Inc. specializing in investments in incubation, early stage, middle stage, and later/pre-IPO stage companies. It prefers to invest in the field of information technology, telecommunications, content platform services, battery power, authentication security, BigData, a solution with devices, cloud, and communication platforms. The firm invests in and outside of Japan. It seeks to invest up to about USD $2 million to USD $3 million per investment. It prefers to seek minority stakes of around 20% or less per portfolio. The firm seeks to exit its investments through sales of stocks or transfer of shares to DOCOMO and NTT Group companies. It also runs an accelerator program called DOCOMO Incubation Program. Docomo Innovation Ventures, previously known as NTT Investment Partners Inc., was established on February 20, 2008, and is based in Minato, Chiba, Japan.

NTT DOCOMO Ventures

South Korean investment firm, headquartered in Seoul.

Mirae Asset Capital

Metawave

Metawave is a technology company that seeks to revolutionize the future of wireless communications. Leveraging adaptive metamaterials and artificial intelligence, Metawave’s primary market focus is to build intelligent beamsteering radars for autonomous driving. Changing the way automakers think about radar, Metawave is building high-performance radars capable of 3D imaging and vehicle-to-vehicle communications, making autonomous cars safer, smarter, and more connected. In parallel, Metawave is also developing smart beamsteering antennas for 4G and 5G networks to provide faster networks and near-instant connectivity for billions of users. Metawave’s current flagship beamsteering technology platform was developed at Xerox PARC. Founded in 2017, Metawave is located in PARC’s headquarters in Palo Alto, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley.

Metawave is a pioneering company developing advanced radar sensing and perception technologies for autonomous vehicles and systems. The company's core offerings include the SPEKTRA radar platform, which features patented phased array beamforming and steering capabilities enabled by Metawave's proprietary Marconi chips and Antenna-in-Package (AiP) modules. This technology allows for unprecedented long-range, high-resolution imaging radar performance in all-weather conditions, making cars safer and smarter.

Revolutionizing the Future of Wireless Communications

Automotive radar startups review 2021

U.S. Army Funds Advancement in Perception Sensing for Autonomous Ground Systems

Top 5 Out Of 500 Sensor Startups In Automotive

Radar Sensing & Perception Solution for US Army Autonomous Ground Systems

Metawave Awarded $1.7 Million Direct

Metawave Secures Additional $26M In Convertible and Debt Financing to Accelerate Delivery of Mobility Sensing Solutions

A new generation for mobile connectivity with 5G and beyond

Next-gen Mobile Networks

Metawave Gets $26M In Bridge Financing

Metawave is a pioneering company developing advanced radar sensing and perception technologies for autonomous vehicles and systems. The company's core offerings include the SPEKTRA radar platform, which features patented phased array beamforming and steering capabilities enabled by Metawave's proprietary Marconi chips and Antenna-in-Package (AiP) modules. This technology allows for unprecedented long-range, high-resolution imaging radar performance in all-weather conditions, making cars safer and smarter.
Metawave's SPEKTRA radar is designed to distinguish objects close to each other in challenging driving scenarios, with a claimed range of up to 300 meters and resolutions down to 7.5 centimeters in azimuth, two degrees in elevation, and 0.1 meters per second in Doppler. The radar platform processes up to 30 Gbps of raw data across 2304 channels, enabling advanced perception capabilities through Metawave's AWARE AI object classification engine.
In addition to automotive applications, Metawave is developing solutions for 5G connectivity, including TURBO active repeaters and KLONE passive reflectors aimed at enabling more efficient and cost-effective deployments. The company has also secured contracts from the US Air Force and Army for radar technologies for electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL) aircraft and off-road autonomous ground vehicles.
Metawave's approach combines analog beamforming with digital MIMO in a hybrid scalable architecture, addressing the challenges of long-range, high-resolution imaging radar with low size, cost, and weight. As of June 2022, the company had raised over USD 60 million in funding from financial and strategic investors, including Denso.

3Red8, now known as ZB8 Infra, is an infrastructure company focused on constructing a nationwide fiber optic network across the US. Their mission is to build core internet infrastructure, enabling the next generation of digital technologies such as AI, autonomous vehicles, 5G/6G, IoT, smart grids, and more. ZB8 Infra's innovative approach involves creating a sustainable, high-capacity, diverse, and secure national fiber network that ensures secure, faster, and more reliable end-to-end data transport solutions compared to legacy networks.
The company's network architecture follows a "triple-redundant, figure-eight" design, ensuring resilience and top-tier performance. If one path encounters issues, the other two seamlessly maintain data flow. This groundbreaking network aims to reduce the nation's digital divide by providing affordable connectivity to underserved communities along its routes.
ZB8 Infra's Phase 1 network build, spanning approximately 335 miles from Ashburn to Virginia Beach, is set to commence construction in the summer of 2024. This initial phase will strategically link Virginia Beach cable landing assets, the Richmond Network Access Point (NAP), and the Ashburn data center hub, with an expected completion date of Q1 2026.
In April 2024, the company announced its evolution from a fiber optic transport network to a national digital infrastructure solution, prioritizing redundancy and diversity for various stakeholders seeking secure, direct connections. ZB8 Infra's network incorporates the latest fiber technology, integrating sensor, measurement, and AI technologies during construction.

3Red8

Aarna Networks is an edge computing and 5G management solutions provider based in San Jose, California and Bengaluru, India. The company offers a Multi Cluster Orchestration Platform (AMCOP), an open-source orchestration, lifecycle management, and real-time policy and closed-loop automation platform designed to simplify the management of edge native and 5G network services.
In February 2023, Aarna Networks launched Aarna Edge Services (AES), a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) version of AMCOP that provides zero-touch edge orchestration and management services. AES enables tasks such as provisioning, configuring, and managing multi-cloud connectivity for cloud edge users, colo users, and SD-WAN service providers. It supports multi-cloud strategies, connecting the edge to public clouds, and allows users to share storage across public clouds and edge applications without incurring egress costs.
AES also facilitates the deployment of Machine Learning applications at the edge, reducing traffic to public clouds and eliminating the need for expensive on-premises hardware. The platform enables software-defined content delivery network (CDN) instances from partners to improve rich media application performance. Additionally, AES allows enterprises and operators to orchestrate O-RAN workloads and 5G Core on the cloud edge with partners.
In October 2023, Aarna Networks closed an oversubscribed seed funding round, raising USD 1.5 million from investors including LDV Partners, 3Lines, Carat Venture Partners, and Nvidia. The funding will be used to bring the company's cloud-Edge infrastructure, generative AI workloads, and Private 5G offerings to market.
In February 2024, Aarna Networks partnered with Airspan Networks and Druid Software to offer a managed private 5G solution for multi-site deployments, targeting service providers and system integrators. The solution combines Aarna's AMCOP platform, Airspan's sub-6GHz private 5G radio network, and Druid's 4G/5G core network platform, providing a "zero-touch" bundle for scalable Industry 4.0 systems.

Aarna Networks

<div>
 
 AST SpaceMobile is developing the first and only space-based cellular broadband network designed to operate directly with standard, unmodified smartphones. The company's technology aims to provide global connectivity by deploying a constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit that can communicate directly with mobile devices on the ground. AST SpaceMobile's satellites, called Bluebirds, feature large communications arrays measuring 693 square feet, making them the largest commercial communications arrays ever deployed in low Earth orbit. The company's first five commercial satellites completed final assembly in July 2024 and were prepared for shipment to Cape Canaveral for a planned launch in September 2024. These initial satellites are expected to provide non-continuous service across the US with over 5,600 cells in premium low-band spectrum. AST SpaceMobile's technology utilizes the 850 MHz low-band spectrum, which offers superior signal penetration and coverage capabilities. In April 2023, the company successfully demonstrated its technology by placing the world's first call from an ordinary cellphone in Texas to another cellphone in Japan using its BlueWalker three prototype satellite. AST SpaceMobile aims to deploy up to 168 satellites to achieve global coverage, with an estimated total cost approaching USD 5 billion for the full constellation.
 
</div>

AST Space Mobile

Astranis is a San Francisco-based company that designs and manufactures small, low-cost telecommunications satellites to provide broadband internet access in remote and underserved areas. The company's unique approach involves building compact geostationary orbit (GEO) satellites weighing around 400-600 kilograms, significantly smaller than traditional GEO satellites that can be the size of a school bus.
Astranis' satellites utilize a proprietary software-defined radio payload technology, allowing for frequency and coverage flexibility, as well as efficient spectrum utilization. The company's first commercial satellite, Arcturus, launched in April 2023, was designed to provide over 7.5 gigabits per second (Gbps) of throughput in the Ka-band to triple satellite internet capacity across Alaska through a partnership with Pacific Dataport Inc. However, Arcturus experienced solar power issues post-launch, limiting its capabilities.
To address this, Astranis deployed a multi-mission satellite called UtilitySat in 2023 as an interim solution. UtilitySat can provide connectivity across Ku, Ka, and Q/V bands and has the ability to reposition multiple times within the GEO belt, thanks to its dual chemical and electric propulsion system.
Astranis' satellites have a designed lifespan of around 8-10 years, roughly half that of conventional GEO satellites. The company operates the satellites it builds and leases the capacity to customers, including telcos, Fortune 500 companies, and governments. In 2024, Astranis unveiled plans for its next-generation Omega satellites, designed to provide over 50 Gbps of throughput, five times more than the current generation. The Omega satellites will feature solid-state power amplifiers instead of traditional vacuum tubes, improving efficiency and reducing weight.
By the end of 2024, Astranis aims to have contracts worth over USD 1.2 billion in revenue from satellites sold, with customers in countries like Mexico, Argentina, Thailand, and the Philippines. The company has also expressed interest in competing for the Protected Tactical SATCOM - Global (PTS-G) program, a US government initiative for a proliferated GEO telecoms constellation.

Astranis

Bad Cell Reception LLC (BCR) specializes in providing cellular signal enhancement solutions for multi-dwelling units (MDUs), hospitality, and commercial buildings. The company offers custom-designed, cost-effective alternatives to traditional Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS) to improve cellular reception within buildings. BCR's services encompass consultation, property surveying, and system implementation, aimed at boosting tenant satisfaction, increasing retention, and enhancing property value. Their cellular enhancement systems are designed to address the growing demand for improved cell signal, which has become one of the most desired amenities for residents over the past decade.
In addition to cellular enhancement, BCR offers security camera systems tailored to meet various project scales, from small setups to complex multi-campus or multi-building requirements. The company employs the latest equipment to ensure quick deployment and compliance with client specifications. BCR also provides solutions for Emergency Responder Radio Coverage (ERRC) and public safety radio signal boost systems, which can be crucial for code compliance in many buildings. Furthermore, the company can assist with ancillary technology needs such as internet of Things (IoT) backbones and WiFi systems.
BCR emphasizes its ability to intervene at any stage of construction, from groundbreaking to near completion, to address cellular signal needs. The company positions itself as an alternative to 5G for solving in-building reception issues, noting that 5G technology often performs worse than 4G LTE inside buildings due to weaker signal strength. BCR's team brings over 50 years of combined experience in the telecom and cellular industry, leveraging this expertise to provide efficient and effective solutions for improving in-building cellular coverage.

Bad Cell Reception LLC

Companies that are developing land-based hardware and equipment which are installed on the earth's surface to transmit and receive 5G/6G signals for use in telecommunications, including base stations, antennas, and routers

Companies that are developing space-based hardware and equipment to transmit and receive 5G/6G signals for use in telecommunications, including satellites and other space-based equipment

Companies that are developing technology and solutions which are used to improve existing network range or efficiency; also includes companies looking to build next generation networks themselves

Companies developing next-generation software solutions for mobile service providers to manage cloud infrastructure and network services

Provides 5G/6G telecom technologies to offer lower latency and increased capacity and coverage

Earth-based hardware and telecom software companies adopt AI/ML for design and RAN automation

Some network optimization companies offer a single network to connect users and IoT devices globally

Metawave

Sources

About EDGE

Contact Us

Resources

Area of Focus

Technology Research Made Effortless