Driveblocks raises 3.5 million euros for autonomous driving

Driveblocks has closed a €3.5 million pre-Series A financing round. Startup The company develops software for autonomous driving in off-road applications, relying on AI-based environmental perception. Forward One is leading the funding round. Bayern Kapital, Rethink Ventures, and angel investor Joachim Drees are investing again.

The new funds will be used for further product development, safety certification, and initial series production deployments with OEMs and system integrators. Driveblocks is targeting manufacturers and operators of agricultural machinery, construction equipment, and military vehicles.

Focus on robust environmental perception

Off-road vehicles play a vital role in infrastructure, agriculture, and defense. At the same time, the sector presents unique challenges: unstructured environments, harsh weather, vegetation, and a lack of maps complicate autonomous systems. Driveblocks bridges this gap with a cross-application autonomy stackThe software combines camera and lidar data into a real-time 3D model and makes driving decisions based on it. The team uses AI-intensive and explainable algorithms for safety-critical applications.

“Reliable environmental perception, the use of AI functions on edge hardware, and the operation of software in safety-critical environments are the limiting factors for off-road autonomy. This funding round will enable us to shape the transition from pilot projects to initial series deployments. Together with our customers, we are driving forward autonomous solutions for applications with high safety requirements.”

explained Alexander Wischnewski, CEO and Co-Founder of Driveblocks.

Investors see potential in the market

Forward One emphasizes the industrial relevance of the technology. Cailin Greiner, Investment Manager at Forward One, comments:

“Driveblocks focuses on the key challenges of off-road autonomy: environmental perception, edge cases, and certification. The application-independent approach, trained on data from a wide variety of environments, delivers high robustness and is already functional on production-ready hardware. The commercial relevance of the technology is confirmed by the fact that initial customers are already moving from integration to series production.”

“Autonomous vehicles are gaining importance in all types of off-road applications. Unlike its competitors, Driveblocks’ scalable software platform relies on mapless environmental perception, which offers more flexible deployment in unstructured environments and greater robustness in fog, rain, and other challenging weather conditions. This technological USP makes Driveblocks an exciting investment opportunity for us in the field of Physical AI.”

so Monika Steger, Managing Director of Bayern Kapital.

The founding team of Driveblocks closely combines research and application. They won a prize while still pursuing their doctorates at the Technical University of Munich. international research competition for autonomous racing vehicles. The vehicles completed realistic racing scenarios at speeds of up to 280 km/h at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and later in Las Vegas.

“Looking ahead, we will focus even more strongly on the industrialization of our technology. With this investment, we are expanding our industrialization and operations team and continuing to invest strategically in technology development. Munich is increasingly becoming a center for robotics and defense technology, and we want to actively contribute to advancing the European ecosystem.”

says Stephan Matz, COO and Co-Founder of Driveblocks.