Cambridge/Bristol-based next gen positioning firm FocalPoint raises £6 million in Series B round

UK based deep-tech company FocalPoint has closed a Series-B round which saw a fresh £6 million line the coffers.

The round was fully funded by Draper Esprit, and no further details were provided. This now brings FocalPoint’s total raised to £10 million with investors including Draper Esprit, Passion Capital, IQ Capital, Cambridge Angels, Rockspring Nominees, Cambridge Innovation Capital and Demis Hassabis.

FocalPoint is seeking to solve the problem of, well, just that; seeking. We’ve all been there, relying on a GPS unit to get to our destination, only to have the dreaded “acquiring signal” notification when we need it least.

This loss of signal is caused by obscured, reflected, and weak satellite signals, particularly those in cities and densely built up environments. FocalPoint’s team is comprised of former members of Cambridge University’s Experimental and Theoretical Physics department, BAE Systems and the European Space Agency, and are making headway into solving this problem.

To be fair, it’s not just my GPS getting me lost that’s at stake here. There are quite a few complex machineries around the global that depend upon GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems), the backbone behind systems such as GPS, Galileo, GLONASS and BeiDou, least of which involves autonomous vehicles. This “signal drop” can result in a number of positioning and timing errors, not exactly desirable when cruising around town hands free.

Additionally, the current standard of reliance on GNSS systems exposes autonomous vehicles, aircraft, drones and robots to criminal activities. Through spoofing, criminals can emit a false GPS signal that either disguises their location or causes another device to become confused about its actual position.

Now we’ll add that FocalPoint can also lower battery consumption of industrial IoT devices through their proprietary technology, and it’s pretty easy to see why and how the firm took home the “Europe’s Hottest SpaceTech Start-up award" at the 2020 Europas.