MOTOR Ai gets seed funding toward explainable self-driving software

Adam Bahlke and Roy Uhlmann, the founders of MOTOR Ai, in Berlin. Source: © 2025 Gene Glover/Agentur Focus

“In a world racing toward autonomous vehicles, Europe has taken a different path — demanding not just performance, but explainability, safety, and full legal compliance,” said MOTOR Ai. The Berlin-based company today announced that it has raised $20 million in seed funding to bring its certified, neuroscience-driven technology into full deployment, starting with German public roads.

“Our solution meets key requirements for transparency and traceability of autonomous driving decisions, as required by authorities. stated Roy Uhlmann, CEO of MOTOR Ai. “That clearly distinguishes us from U.S. providers and at the same time optimally complies with European regulatory requirements.”

Uhlmann and Chief Technology Officer Adam Bahlke founded the company in 2017. MOTOR Ai said it has developed SAE Level 4 cognitive intelligence for autonomous driving. It asserted that it plans to develop the first certified autonomous vehicle fleet for Europe.

Roy Uhlmann, co-founder and CEO of MOTOR Ai. Source: © 2025 Gene Glover/Agentur Focus

MOTOR Ai promises reliability, transparency

MOTOR Ai said its system can make decisions in complex traffic situations. In contrast to purely machine learning systems, which are based on pretrained situations, the technology can make reliable and comprehensible decisions in previously untested scenarios, claimed the startup.

The German company added that its artificial intelligence reasons through data rather than just reacting. MOTOR Ai said it has built “a cognitive architecture rooted in active inference, a model from neuroscience that allows vehicles to make structured, transparent decisions.”

The company said its approach provides two advantages: The autonomous driver can be certified according to international safety standards, and, because if its ability to generalize information, the system does not need to be trained in all scenarios.

System designed for European certification

Trust is becoming increasingly important to the widespread adoption of autonomous systems, noted MOTOR Ai. As self-driving vehicles move closer to everyday use, it said European governments and the public are asking tougher questions: How are these systems making decisions? Can those decisions be explained or are they pure black-box systems?

MOTOR Ai declared that its architecture is designed to answer those questions clearly, legally, and reliably.

While other providers pursue autonomy through brute-force data collection, end-to-end solutions, and black-box prediction models, MOTOR Ai said its “full-stack” system already meets the most stringent European and international safety, privacy, and cybersecurity requirements. They include UNECE approval standards, ISO 26262 (ASIL-D), Regulation (EU) 2022/1426, Autonomous Vehicles Approval and Operation Ordinance (AFGBV), GDPR, the EU AI Act, and upcoming Cyber Resilience Act provisions.

“This type of AI enables the highest safety standard in autonomous driving — as is already legally standardized in Europe,” said Uhlmann.

Financing to build team and trust

Segenia Capital and eCAPITAL led the seed round with participation from mobility-focused angel investors. MOTOR Ai said the new capital will support hiring, commercial rollouts, and expansion.

“This ‘Made in Germany’ in-house development reduces interdependencies while strengthening Europe’s ability to operate in critical innovative technology,” said Lucas Merle, principal at eCAPITAL.

MOTOR Ai said vehicles equipped with its Level 4 system for autonomous driving will start operations this year in several German districts. The vehicles will be supervised on board by safety drivers to be removed in 2026.

These deployments will include both the full onboard autonomy stack and the technical supervision required by law. MOTOR Ai said this will “give local transit authorities a fully operable path to autonomous transport without compromising control or safety.”

“In a regulated environment like Europe, trust and compliance are non-negotiable,” said Michael Janßen, general partner at Segenia Capital. “MOTOR Ai has built a solution that is not only technologically differentiated, but [is also] fundamentally aligned with how Europe thinks about infrastructure and public safety. This is how autonomy will scale in future.”

Looking ahead, MOTOR Ai plans to grow its engineering, safety, and type approval teams. It also said it will expand deployment partnerships with municipalities and begin cross-border regulatory expansion into other European markets. The company’s stated long-term goal is “a certified, explainable driver system that can serve as infrastructure for safe, transparent autonomy — one that Europe can both build on and believe in.”

“We don’t think the future of autonomy in Europe should be a mystery,” said Uhlmann. “It should be measurable, inspectable, and designed to earn public trust. That’s what we’ve been building, and now we’re ready to scale it.”

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