Mobileye founder Amnon Shashua is looking to take his second startup public by the end of the year.
He had just agreed to sell his autonomous vehicle technology firm to Intel for US$15 billion.
Shashua co-founded OrCam about 10 years after Mobileye, which produced camera sensors that will help develop self-driving cars.
OrCam uses a similar computer vision technology. A camera is attached to eyeglass frames to help the visually impaired interact with their surroundings.
The camera can read newspapers, street signs, and recognize common items, dictating words into the user’s ear.
“At Mobileye we’re looking for vehicles and pedestrians and traffic signs and traffic lights and understanding the roadway and also controlling the vehicle for autonomous driving in order to avoid collisions and control the car. In Orcam, we are trying to understand text, barcodes, faces, situations, in order to help people with visual disabilities. So the customer functions are completely different but the commonality is computer vision for the benefit of society,” said Shashua.
OrCam is currently valued at $600 million.
The company’s sales targets for 2017 are four times more than 2016, Shashua told Reuters.
“We believe that by the end of 2018, the revenue, the profit of the company will be at such a level together with ability to forecast that it’s good enough for an IPO,” he said, adding that the listing would either be on Nasdaq or the New York Stock Exchange.
The Intel-Mobileye deal is expected to close within nine months. Intel’s Automated Driving Group will be integrated into Mobileye, with the operation based in Israel and Shashua remaining in charge. The chip giant is also invested in OrCam.
Shashua will continue to work on both Mobileye and OrCam. He is confident that he will be able give enough attention to both efforts.
“I’m going to get more responsibilities as folding in Intel’s assets in autonomous driving and leading the combined effort, but I believe this is not going to change anything in terms of the time I spend at OrCam,” said Shashua.
