Parc spins off wireless technology company Metawave

Metawave’s aim is to commercialise smart beamsteering antenna systems for autonomous vehicles and 5G markets. Incubated at Parc, Metawave secured significant initial seed funding from investors in Silicon Valley and New York. Dr. Maha Achour, Metawave’s CEO and Dr. Bernard Casse, CTO founded the company with the vision of disrupting the status quo in wireless technology, by merging adaptive metamaterials and AI in order to reach performance and safety levels currently unattainable with today’s technologies. Dr. Achour has 20 years leadership experience in RF, wireless, metamaterial structures, optics, and networking industries in commercial and defense sectors. Dr. Casse brings 10 years of experience commercializing fundamental science, and has pioneered the beamsteering technology with his former Parc metamaterials applied research team. Today’s automotive radars have their limitations – they can’t discriminate objects, do not work well at long ranges and in difficult conditions, and have relatively slow processing speeds. Combining ultra-fast beamsteering/scanning of a pencil beam with intelligent algorithms enables capabilities like 3D imaging, identification and classification of objects, non-line-of-sight object detection, and accident anticipation by analysing traffic patterns, with smart functionality in all-weather conditions. “This spinoff embodies Parc’s unparalleled commitment to the startup community, and its role in the development and extension of Parc’s world-class innovation ecosystem,” said Metawave’s CEO Dr. Achour. “Metawave is fundamentally changing the way the automotive industry thinks about radars. We are on a mission to build highly intelligent and high-performing automotive radars capable of true 3D vision, Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I), and Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication.”