Finnish startup to bring smart mirrors for commercial vehicles, bags €7M funding

In 2017, there were 511,455 crashes in the US involving a large truck or a bus. Of those, 4,455 were crashes with fatalities. In the EU, trucks account for about 2% of vehicles on the road but represent 15% of fatalities. Many of these crashes can be attributed to limited visibility from the cockpit, including multiple blind spots. Smart mirrors can reduce the rate of accidents and fatalities due to these blind spots. And this is where Basemark, a Finnish startup comes into the scene. 

Building safer vehicles

Recently, the Helsinki-based tech startup which develops Rocksolid Engine, a world-leading real-time graphics and compute software solution formed a partnership with Japan-based Digital Media Professionals Inc. to develop a smart mirror system for the global commercial vehicle industry.

€7 million equity funding

And now, the company has announced that they have also raised €7 million equity funding. The investment round was led by ETF Partners. As per the company press release, Basemark is planning to use this funding to accelerate its growth in the field of autonomous vehicles.

Basemark’s Founder and Chairman, Tero Sarkkinen, said: “We are thrilled to have ETF Partners on board. Over the years we have worked hard on building a category-defining product and establishing strong international relationships across the automotive industry. This new capital injection will enable us to hit the gas and take us to the next level.”

Founded in 2015 by Arto Ruotsalainen, Tero Sarkkinen, Basemark grew its business to over $10 million in revenue and achieved profitability quickly without any institutional money. The Rocksolid Engine developed by the company is a lightweight and portable graphics and compute engine for mission-critical applications in automotive, aerospace, medical, military, and other industries.

Timing of the investment: Optimal

The company also develops system performance evaluation tools such as Basemark Automotive Testing and Basemark GPU. Clients include ARM, Imagination Technologies, Intel, KPIT, Mediatek, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Renesas, Samsung, and Visteon.

For Basemark’s CEO, Keith Silverang, the timing of the investment is optimal. “My own focus since I started has been on building up mature business processes and a world-class team so that we can accelerate our core product development and scale-up rapidly. That team is now in place. We have had very strong and profitable growth to date, and our goal is to transform Basemark into a leading software product company in the space in the next couple of years. The ETF investment will enable us to do just that. ETF will bring us not only the fuel for growth, but we can benefit from their focus on sustainability, professionalism, experience, and world-class network.”

Remy de Tonnac of ETF partners will join the Board of the Company, together with Jarkko Virtanen, ETF’s Nordic venture partner, as Board Observer. “Road transportation is responsible for about 20% of total CO2 emissions and research has shown that the introduction of Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) could help reduce transport emissions by as much as 80%, due to the advent of Transport as a Service and improved asset utilisation. We believe Basemark’s critical AI and software technology are integral parts of the AV revolution.”

Main image credits: Basemark