2024 Q2 report: investors renew backing as projects progress to contracts

24 July 2024

A 35% jump in staff, key customer projects moving into contracting and a $2M funding boost have turbocharged our last three months, writes our CEO, Sam Poirier.

Schools may be out for the summer in Fredericton, but the pace of progress at Potential is doing anything but slowing. Fresh seed funding is driving key technical hires and landmark innovation projects with customers, and accelerating our technological development. Here are my key highlights from the second quarter of this year.

Our funding

We announced in May that we had raised new funds to underpin innovation programs with global automotive customers. This successful $2M CAD extension to our seed round builds on previous commitments for a total of $8.5M raised since May 2020.

In a vote of confidence in our continued progress, we welcomed back returning partners Brightspark Ventures, Build Ventures and NBIF (the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation), with Farpointe joining for the first time.

We’re using this funding to drive commercialization of our perception solutions, particularly in the automotive and powersports sectors.

We were excited to see our news picked up widely by the world’s media, leading to placements and deeper dives in many of the publications that inform and influence our target customers, including TechCrunch, Top Gear, and Yahoo Finance.

Our technology

Over the past three months, we’ve begun to shape our core technologies into products informed by customer projects and conversations. 

In particular, we’ve successfully spun out granular-level features required for integration into automotive customers’ software stacks; we’ve dramatically reduced inference time and overall model size; and we’ve built a suite of new data calibration tools to ensure our datasets are accurate and robust when training our AI models.

We’ll walk through some of these important aspects in separate articles at our website, so keep an eye out for those in the coming weeks.

“We’ve successfully spun out granular-level features required for integration into automotive customers’ software stacks.”

We also added new vehicles to our test fleet this quarter, including a new pick-up truck and motorcycle. To equip these with the right instrumentation needed for data collection and to verify how our systems are performing, we’ve been building our own hardware reference kits. These kits include a unique display that fits into the tight instrument binnacle of our motorcycle, and a demountable rig for our truck that carries a lidar and stereo camera.

Although we’re focused on software innovation, the reality of working with vehicles is that software and hardware are intimately intertwined. By combining technical expertise across both disciplines under one roof, we gain hands-on, practical insights into every nuance of how our software systems will integrate into client platforms in production.

Our customers

Our commercial team, led by our VP Business Development, Jay Nickerson, has moved into contracting with key customers for next-stage, pre-production programs. These contracts are driving a mountain of critical development work around our business models, pricing, IP protection and how we will collaborate and integrate with multiple departments within major customer organizations. 

One customer meeting stood out to me above others this quarter. It was our first call with an automotive brand globally recognised as a leading innovator in off-road vehicles. Experts from many different client departments were on the call. 

Early in the conversation, we discovered that the way this customer describes its vision for the future of off-road technology matches ours nearly word-for-word! (Namely: “Imagine a world where your grandparents can get into a vehicle and, without adjusting any settings or prior experience, are able to safely, confidently and speedily traverse the toughest off-road terrain.”)

“As we engage with more brands in the space, it’s clear that enthusiasm for our solutions is universal.”

While it may be anecdotal, this exciting meeting underlined to the Potential leadership team that our market positioning and our direction of travel are exactly where they need to be for success in this sector. This was backed up by feedback gathered at attendance at a series of conferences across North America and Europe this quarter, including being asked to present our solutions to a panel of automotive experts.

Time and again, we're finding that the problems we are working on are not unique to individual companies. As our commercial team engages with more brands in the space, it’s clear that the enthusiasm for our solutions is universal.

Our people

We scaled up our team by 35% this quarter to keep pace with customer needs. Hiring has primarily focused on adding technical roles to strengthen our core capabilities. Our new recruits have also bolstered our AI and machine learning capabilities, including deep experience in scaling up AI-specific workflows and technologies.

These new hires are allowing us to expand the breadth and depth of our research and development. Meanwhile, our VP People and Ops, Jessica McQuarrie, has been developing scalable processes and empowering our teams to collaborate effectively and efficiently, to ensure we’re well-positioned for continued growth. Look out for more about our new hires in upcoming content at our website and social media channels.

In June, Potential reached a significant milestone – we turned six! We celebrated in true Potential style, with a day out at our off-road test track, complete with off-road vehicles and BBQ.

When I founded the company in 2018, I could only have dreamed about attracting such a talented, enthusiastic and diverse team. It’s not all been plain sailing – nothing ever is when you’re trying to do something that’s never been done before – but we are where we are today because of the grit, genius and generosity of those who’ve chosen to join us and who believe in the power of Potential.

How you can help

We’ll soon share some updated videos that show just how far our technology has come this year. We’ll also explain more about how we’re solving technical challenges in a series of posts by our CTO Bill Lamey. The first is available now, and explains how decades spent mapping ocean floors taught Bill lessons that he’s applying today at Potential to accelerate our development. 

We’re keen to plug in more amazing people who can help us as we take our technology to market. We’re particularly interested in hearing from experts in licensing, contracting and intellectual property (preferably in the automotive space). If you know someone who fits what we’re looking for, please point them in our direction! 

Once again, thankyou for all your support. We’re standing on the brink of some remarkable accomplishments in 2024. I can’t wait to share more.

Sam