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Former Apple engineers launch Lyte, a ‘visual brain’ startup to improve robot vision

MacDailyNews

Jan 5

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Leading engineers from the team that developed Apple’s Face ID are launching a new startup focused on advanced vision technology to enable robots to perceive their surroundings more accurately and navigate safely.

The company, called Lyte, came out of stealth mode on Monday, having secured approximately $107 million in funding from investors such as Fidelity Management & Research, Atreides Management, Exor Ventures, Key1 Capital, VentureTech Alliance, and a group of private investors led by Israeli entrepreneur Avigdor Willenz.

Samantha Kelly for Bloomberg News:
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Mountain View, California-based Lyte was founded in 2021 by three former Apple employees — Alexander Shpunt, Arman Hajati, and Yuval Gerson — who played a major role in building the depth-sensing and perception technology that Face ID uses to capture faces. Earlier, Shpunt co-founded and served as chief technology officer of the 3D-sensing technology provider PrimeSense, which was acquired by Apple in 2013 for $350 million and was the genesis for what would become Face ID. Gerson also worked at PrimeSense before the Apple takeover.
“We are trying to take the best things that Apple taught us — on attention to detail, operational excellence and how to excite and wow the customers — in order to bring this to the robotics market,” Shpunt said in an interview. “Apple was definitely a good school.”
Shpunt said he believes Lyte will serve as the “visual brain” for robotics, acting as both the eyes and visual cortex, with a focus on sensing and perception technology. Its flagship product, LyteVision, includes three sensor types: a camera, inertial motion sensing and a 4D sensor, which measures distance and velocity. The system then collects the location and visual data together in one platform…
Lyte did not disclose current customers, but said its technology can be applied to different forms of robotics, from humanoids and mobile robots to robotaxis.

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MacDailyNews Take: Last November, Morgan Stanley estimated that Apple could make $133 billion a year on humanoid robots by 2040 (which we think might be laughably low). They’ll need vision capabilities as perfect as possible!

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