Arbe Robotics Ltd. (NASDAQ:ARBE) CEO and co-founder Kobi Marenko
Kobi Marenko is Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder and Director of Arbe Robotics Ltd. (NASDAQ:ARBE). An entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience in leading technology and media startups from seed stage to acquisition.
Mr. Marenko was the Founder and President of Taptica, a mobile DSP listed on the London Stock Exchange and acquired by Tremor International, and Founder and CEO of Logia, a mobile content platform acquired by Mandalay Digital.
Mr. Marenko holds a B.A. in Philosophy from the Tel Aviv University.
Arbe Robotics Ltd. (NASDAQ:ARBE) is at the cutting edge of enabling self driving vehicles.
“With this vision, we founded Arbe. I was the first investor in the company; we raised some seed money and built a prototype of a high-definition radar.
We decided to focus on the automotive industry, recognizing that delivery drones are still a long way from becoming mainstream and a viable business venture.
And although we originally planned to buy off-the-shelf RF chips and build our algorithms on existing processors like Nvidia, we quickly concluded that these RF chips didn’t have enough transmitting and receiving channels to solve the driver assist and autonomous driving challenge.
Further, processor chips on the market were not optimized for high channel count radar processing.
Instead, we decided to develop a dedicated processor and high channel count transmitting and receiving chips to provide the foundation for our proprietary algorithms.
With that decision we went from being a software company to being a semiconductor company that develops chips.
And not just chips, three chips — transmitter, receiver and processor — and the reference design for radar systems, all within the strict standards of the automotive industry.
At the time, there was no chip in the industry that met the rigorous qualifications demanded by automotive, both in terms of the qualification process and the level of faults allowable in order to proceed to production.
This was the ultramarathon that we began.
We raised upwards of $70 million overall as a private company.
Then, in October 2021, we merged into a SPAC and started trading under the symbol ARBE, raising another $100 million.
Last year, we raised a follow-on investment of $23 million, for a total of close to $200 million.
We are now in the final stages of bringing those three chips to full automotive production.
We currently have four Tier 1 customers: Magna, the largest North American Tier 1; HiRain, one of the largest Chinese ADAS Tier 1; Weifu, another significant Tier 1 in China; and Sensrad, a non-automotive radar house in Sweden that is designing radar solutions solely on the Arbe Chipset.
By the end of 2024, our Chinese Tier 1s will start serial production of next-gen radar systems based on our chipsets, and will launch a car in China with our product in 2025.
We are in the final stages of selection with around 10 leading European, U.S. and Japanese car companies to implement their hands-free driving software stack that will come to the market during late 2026/2027.”
The hardware/software stack from Arbe Robotics Ltd. (NASDAQ:ARBE) is almost unique.
“For the first quarter, I would say that the main highlight is the fact that a majority of the leading OEMs issued RFQs that validate Arbe’s approach.
Most are stating that high-definition radar based on a high channel count — exactly like what we are developing — is the only way to deliver safe hands-free driving.
In March, the Director of Radar and Radar Perception for Mercedes-Benz recognized the indispensability of a high-channel-count radar and said it loud and clear in a public conference:
The performance demands for ADAS radars necessitate an array of no fewer than 32×32 channels.
It is important to note that only two companies meet this requirement today — Arbe with a 48×48 channel array, and Mobileye with a 32×48 array.”
Arbe Robotics Ltd. (NASDAQ:ARBE) is at an interesting stage in its investment development.
“I think this year represents the first year that we are really in a position, in terms of the technology and the maturity of the product, to win contracts. We expect to start seeing those contracts come, and our basic expectation for this year is to win a few contracts with the leading OEMs.
From here, I believe that the main goal is to start shipping chips to customers in early 2025, and to reach breakeven and profitability in 2026. I believe that by the end of the decade we can be the leading player in next-generation radar.”
Get the complete interview with the CEO and co-founder of this innovative and productive semiconductor company, exclusively from the Wall Street Transcript.
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