Berlin-based MOTOR Ai, a company specialised in developing Level 4 intelligence for autonomous driving, has secured $20M (approximately €17.1M) in a seed funding round led by Segenia Capital and eCAPITAL, with participation from mobility-focused angels.
The German company will use the funds to grow its engineering, safety, and type approval teams, expand deployment partnerships with municipalities, and begin cross-border regulatory expansion into other European markets.
The Origin of MOTOR Ai
Founded by Roy Uhlmann and Adam Bahlke, MOTOR Ai began as a bootstrapped startup with a clear mission: to revolutionise autonomous driving by solving their most pressing challenge, which was generating safe and efficient driving manoeuvres without relying on costly, data-intensive training from millions of miles on the road.
“MOTOR Ai initially aimed to collaborate with established automakers to integrate their technology. However, they soon discovered that essential perception modules were either missing or inadequate in the market,” says Roy Ulhmann, CEO at MOTOR Ai.
Faced with this gap, MOTOR Ai made the strategic decision to develop its entire full-stack autonomous driving system in-house, controlling every layer of the L4 system from perception to decision-making.
“With Adam Bahlke, CTO and Co-Founder of MOTOR Ai, additionally joining the DIN commission tasked with preparing Germany’s pioneering legal framework for autonomous driving in 2019, this shift marked a pivotal moment. Being part of the DIN commission gave MOTOR Ai a clear vision of how the final system must look to comply with both technical and legal standards. Hence, those critical technical bottlenecks forced MOTOR Ai to invent new solutions where none existed,” adds Ulhmann.
What does MOTOR Ai do?
MOTOR Ai has developed Level 4 intelligence for autonomous driving. The system, which is based on cognitive intelligence, can make decisions in complex traffic situations.
“The company is redefining the future of autonomous driving with a new approach in creating safe and explainable driving manoeuvres, which solves the edge case problem of the autonomous driving industry. Born in Europe, we aim to become the benchmark for how safe and reliable autonomous mobility will appear in the future, through groundbreaking technology advancements and a new generation of AI-driven autonomous driving stack,” he adds.
Turning regulatory challenges into a core mission
The company’s foremost hurdle is also its mission — the stringent European regulatory landscape and achieving comprehensive type approval for the Level 4 autonomous driving software.
“This legislative framework inherently demands the MOTOR Ai’s ADS to be explainable and verifiable,” adds Ulhmann.
What does MOTOR Ai do differently?
Unlike traditional AI systems, MOTOR Ai goes beyond black-box neural networks and end-to-end solutions. Instead, their autonomous driving system is based on Active Inference, a concept born from computational neuroscience, not traditional machine learning.
According to Ulhmann, Active inference follows a transparent, model-driven logic that mirrors human perception and action.
It fundamentally changes how vehicles perceive, predict, and decide, while former systems, such as end-to-end solutions or black-box neural networks, make decisions without clear insight into how or why a decision was made.
“Crucially, every decision the MOTOR Ai system makes is traceable and explainable. By using Active Inference, MOTOR Ai’s ADS (Autonomous Driving System) cannot just react to the environment but to act in it. So, instead of the system acting based on huge amounts of data and then reacting accordingly without explanation on why a certain decision was made, using Active Inference, the MOTOR Ai ADS continuously builds and updates a model of how the world works, much like a human driver would,” he explains.
How does it work?
Traffic Situation: The vehicle faces a real-world situation like other cars, pedestrians, traffic signs, the changing weather, etc.Perception: Sensors capture the environmentSensor Fusion: All sensor data is merged into a reliable, complete birds-eye view for full redundancyDecision making with Active Inference:The system predicts how the environment will behave.It compares predictions with real sensor data.If reality is different, it updates its prediction and decisions in real time.Drive by Wire: Electronic controls (steering, braking) execute the refined decisions.
The company’s full-stack system already meets the most stringent European and international safety and compliance requirements, including 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.
“Instead of adapting to regulations, we engineer based on them,” says Ulhmann. “That’s what makes our system approvable by external regulatory bodies.”
From rural roads to roboshuttles
The German company is targeting the public transport sector (C2G) with an ADS that it operates.
Additionally, the company will offer autonomous shuttle services directly to consumers (B2C). The rollout of the company’s technology is designed to be phased, with an initial focus on public mobility. The company plans to use the technology to:
Improves rural connectivityAddress driver shortagesReduces CO2-EmissionsEfficiency gains for local public transport companies facilitate scaling.
Together with regional transit authorities and municipal partners, MOTOR Ai is already underway, laying the groundwork for deployments across Germany.
The company is partnering with the Ludwigslust-Parchim transport company (VLP) for autonomous on-demand buses in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
Another partner is the city of Geestland (Lower Saxony). Autonomous bus line operation is planned for early 2026.
MOTOR Ai delivered the AD Stack for the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), which was used in their autonomous shuttle at the 2023 Federal Garden Show (BUGA) in Mannheim.
Autonomy as a Service and its deployment
Rather than positioning itself as a traditional Tier 1 supplier, MOTOR Ai has taken a different approach — Autonomy as a Service, which includes developing, deploying, and running the ADS.
“This allows the company to ensure the highest safety, regulatory compliance, and system transparency throughout the entire lifecycle,” says Ulhmann.
After getting the approval for MOTOR Ai’s autonomous software, the technology will first be deployed in Germany before expanding throughout Europe.
The initial focus will be on specific use cases, such as on-demand transport within fixed Operational Design Domains (ODDs) and designated areas for public transport and robo-shuttles.
This approach prioritises maximum safety, regulatory compliance, and technical reliability while fostering trust and delivering real-world value from the very first deployment.
“We don’t think the future of autonomy in Europe should be a mystery,” adds Uhlmann, explaining the fundamentally different approach Germany and the EU takes in comparison to other markets. “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.”
“In a regulated environment like Europe, trust and compliance are non-negotiable,” said Michael Janßen, General Partner, Segenia Capital. “MOTOR Ai has built a solution that is not only technologically differentiated but fundamentally aligned with how Europe thinks about infrastructure and public safety. This is how autonomy will scale in future.”
