Strategic investment from Hitachi provides real-world demonstration of LiDAR
reliability and capability.
SAN FRANCISCO, 24 March, 2021 - Baraja has raised AUD$40 million in a new funding round to
accelerate development of its breakthrough Spectrum-Scan™ LiDAR technology. Baraja’s LiDAR sensors
are higher performance and more reliable than legacy LiDAR systems, and enable the safe rollout of
autonomous vehicles sooner. The latest capital raising was led by Blackbird Ventures and includes new
strategic investment from Hitachi Construction Machinery.
Hitachi’s strategic investment comes after a two-year partnership to validate Baraja’s Spectrum-Scan™
sensors in real-world scenarios that prove the technology’s reliability in harsh environments. The
investment will support an expanded rollout of the sensor in mining, construction & industrial vehicle use
cases, and help road-test the products for future autonomous vehicles.
Additional participants in the capital raising include returning investor Main Sequence Ventures, the
venture arm founded by CSIRO, alongside new investors Regal Funds Management, Perennial Value
Management, superannuation fund HESTA and InterValley Ventures, an Australian based venture capital
fund anchored by the Mizuho Financial Group via its affiliate New Frontier Capital Management.
The new capital will be used to expand Baraja’s team and accelerate the development of LiDAR
technology for automotive-grade use in self-driving vehicles. Baraja has validated the technology in
numerous settings through partnerships with Tier 1 suppliers, mining operators and researchers such as
Australia’s national science agency CSIRO and Taiwan’s renowned Industrial Technology Research
Institute’s (ITRI) intelligent mobility division.
Spectrum-Scan™ LiDAR to enable Level 4 self-driving vehicles
Baraja’s Spectrum-Scan™ LiDAR is built to provide the long-term reliability, resolution, range and
automotive-grade features needed to reach Level 4 autonomous driving.
The pioneering technology completely rethinks environment scanning for autonomous vehicles,
exploiting the wavelength properties of light to steer lasers through a prism in order to better detect
objects at range. Spectrum-Scan™ technology is more tolerant to factors that have hindered traditional
LiDAR systems such as heat, shock and vibration. The result is a more precise, more affordable LiDAR
system featuring long-term reliability and exceptional resolution, deployable in more environments, from
highways and city streets to mines and ports.
Spectrum-Scan™ LiDAR technology gives Baraja’s partners the ability to instantly adjust and adapt
scanning resolution to the changing environment, similar to how humans can control their visual focus.
This leads to better safety by improving obstacle detection for self-driving vehicles in a range of settings.
“Legacy LiDAR systems have been hampered by poor performance with limits on range, resolution and
reliability,” said Federico Collarte, CEO and Co-Founder of Baraja. “Our Spectrum-Scan™ LiDAR has proven
reliability in the field, which has been recognized by partners such as Hitachi — one of the world’s most
innovative machine manufacturers. This latest capital and the partnership with Hitachi will also help us to
advance our mission to help make self-driving vehicles an everyday reality.”
Baraja’s Spectrum-ScanTM technology was invented by Federico Collarte and co-founder Cibby
Pulikkaseril, telecommunications industry veterans who used their photonics and fiber optic expertise to
create a LiDAR system that uses the same principles in an autonomous vehicle setting.
Blackbird Ventures and Hitachi investments validate Baraja’s opportunity
Returning investor Blackbird Ventures has doubled down on its previous investment, showcasing its
continued support for Baraja’s superior technology capabilities and product roadmap.
“Countless LiDAR makers have made promises and set deadlines they have failed to meet due to one
fundamental issue: legacy LiDAR doesn’t work the way it needs to,” said Rick Baker, Blackbird Ventures
Co-Founder and board director at Baraja. “Baraja founders Federico and Cibby have taken a truly
different approach with Spectrum-ScanTM that addresses and solves the fundamental challenges others
have faced out of the lab and provides a clear roadmap to automotive-grade LiDAR in the coming years.”
Hideshi Fukumoto Vice President, Executive Officer, and CTO, Hitachi Construction Machinery; President
of Research & Development Group; and President of Client Solutions Group, said: “Spectrum-Scan™
LiDAR is a must-have technology providing better autonomous sensing solutions for mining customers
who demand increasingly higher safety and production efficiency. We are delighted to be working with
Baraja, a company with leading-edge technology in this field.
“More than just an investment relationship, we expect that this relationship will lead to technological
improvements and accelerated commercialization for both parties in areas such as terrain measurement
and obstacle detection. Through this investment, Hitachi Construction Machinery will accelerate the
improvement of autonomous haulage systems (AHS) and the practical application of remote and
autonomous operation of ultra-large hydraulic excavators, as well as expand its application to the civil
engineering and construction fields. We will also strengthen our open innovation initiatives in the digital
field, such as this one.”
About Baraja
Baraja Pty Ltd: Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Sydney, Baraja began its work on a breakthrough
LiDAR technique in the garage of Founder & CEO Federico Collarte. Federico and his Co-Founder & CTO
Cibby Pulikkaseril created an elegant solution to the complex problems facing legacy LiDAR systems that
give vision to self-driving vehicles. Their Spectrum-Scan™ approach addresses scalability, reliability,
vehicle integration and performance issues that legacy LiDAR technologies cannot. Baraja, backed by
Sequoia China, Blackbird Ventures and Main Sequence Ventures’ CSIRO Innovation Fund, has over 100
employees and has offices in Sydney, San Francisco and Shanghai.
About Spectrum-Scan™
Baraja’s Spectrum-Scan™ LiDAR completely rethinks previous approaches to environment-scanning by
exploiting the wavelength properties of light to precisely steer the laser beams being emitted. The result is
a high-performance LiDAR with innate tolerance of factors that have typically inhibited previous LiDAR
systems — such as heat, shock and vibration — leading to long-term high reliability.
Baraja’s SpectrumScan™ technology operates at 1550 nm and is capable of creating high-resolution, longrange point clouds without the shortcomings or mechanical components that hold back traditional
systems. For example, it exceeds the industry long-range sensing requirement of detecting a 10 percent
reflectivity object at more than 200 meters.
Designed and built for maximum reliability in automotive environments, the modular design of the system
uses prisms and tuneable wavelength lasers to provide an unprecedented ability to dynamically adjust
resolution in key regions of interest. This allows the technology to mimic the abilities of the human eye by
instantly changing areas of focus based on the situation.
Spectrum-Scan™ works by rapidly switching the laser’s wavelength and transmitting light through a prism,
which diffracts each color of light in a different direction. When the light returns to the sensor, it is only
processed if wavelength, angle, timing and encoding matches on all signals, ensuring immunity to
interference