Cambridge, UK-based FocalPoint, a company that develops next-generation navigation and positioning software for smartphones, wearables and autonomous vehicles, announced on Thursday, September 8, that it has raised £23M (approximately €26.48M) in a Series C round of funding.
FocalPoint’s CEO, Scott Pomerantz, says, “This injection of capital will enable us to move faster to meet the demands of several big customers in the US and South East Asia and to accelerate our IP portfolio growth.”
Investors in this round
The round was co-led by Molten Ventures and Gresham House.
David Cummings, Partner at Molten Ventures, says, “Existing GPS technologies are no longer fit for purpose and we’re proud to continue our support for FocalPoint in its mission to revolutionise the accuracy of GPS and other global navigation satellite systems and in doing so, solve the issues faced by business and consumers with imprecise and unsafe receivers.”
FocalPoint had earlier raised £6M in a Series B round of funding in 2021. Molten Ventures was the sole investor in the round.
Next-generation positioning solutions
Founded in 2015 by Ramsey Faragher, FocalPoint was developed to improve navigation placement and better meet the needs of organisations and individuals in the twenty-first century. The company says that its positioning and timing systems are essential to the US economy, which is worth over $1T, and the European economy, which is worth over €800B.
Since 2021, the number of employees at FocalPoint has nearly doubled across all of its UK offices. The company also hired former Broadcom SVP Scott Pomerantz as its new CEO, along with other top executives who have extensive expertise in establishing and growing technology companies.
The latest funding round follows FocalPoint’s announcement earlier this year that it received investment from the European Space Agency to create a live demonstration and rapid prototyping system to accelerate the company’s activities in the automotive and mobile sectors.
FocalPoint claims that through its Supercorrelation software, the company has developed a new class of satellite positioning receivers that can measure the directions of the incoming signals and ignore reflected signals and fake “spoofed” signals. This makes the receivers highly accurate in urban areas and more resistant to spoofing attacks.
Founder Ramsey Faragher says, “It has been an amazing experience to grow this company from an idea in my head to an established and world-leading GNSS technology provider. As we continue to add more GNSS customers and partners to our list, I’m excited to be now developing further IP to grow our footprint into other radio technologies and even larger markets.”
