£6m will accelerate roll-out of Bristol-based Focal Point GPS products
Bristol and Cambridge-based GPS tech company Focal Point Positioning has secured £6m in Series B funding from global venture capital firm, Draper Esprit to accelerate the roll-out of its highly accurate positioning technologies for any positioning-dependent device.
Accurate, reliable positioning and timing is vital not just for services we enjoy today, but for future businesses which will be able to build new products and services on top of its technologies. From the smartphone users, sports watch wearers, anyone who has ever hailed an uber or ordered delivery, through to stock traders and city planners who are designing smart cities of the future.
From ‘blue dot’ mapping accuracy on wearables and mobiles, to safety of autonomous vehicles and drones, to lower cost and lower battery consumption for industrial IoT devices, to security and protection from spoofing, Focal Point's technologies address the global frustrations of inaccurate GNSS systems, which are critical to the accurate functioning of large swathes of modern technology.
The funding will enable the company to accelerate its product roadmap, to get its technologies into more chips and devices - and to work with some of the world’s biggest providers of location-based hardware and software to enable next generation positioning accuracy and integrity.
In August 2020 the company signed a deal with u‑blox, a global provider of leading positioning and wireless communication technologies, to integrate Focal Point's Supercorrelation technology into its commercial chips. It is currently running trials of Supercorrelation with a number of major chipset designers and consumer technology OEMs.
Focal Point's CEO, Dr Ramsey Faragher, said: “This is an important moment for our team. Signing our first deal to integrate Supercorrelation into a commercial chip has increased the demand for our products from a multitude of different industries and use cases. This funding will help us to meet that demand and enable Supercorrelation and D-Tail to improve the lives and businesses of people across the globe.”
