According to TechCrunch, Boston-based startup Teradar just raised $150 million in Series B funding from investors including Capricorn Investment Group, Lockheed Martin’s venture arm, and IBEX Investors. The company’s co-founder and CEO Matt Carey has been developing a solid-state sensor that operates in the terahertz band between microwaves and infrared. Teradar claims to be working with five top automakers from the US and Europe to validate the technology, with plans to win a contract for 2028-model vehicles requiring sensor readiness by 2027. The company is also collaborating with three Tier 1 suppliers for manufacturing support. Carey says the sensor price will fall between radar and lidar systems, targeting a few hundred dollars rather than thousands.
Why terahertz matters
Here’s the thing about automotive sensing: we’ve been stuck between three imperfect options. Cameras struggle with glare and low light. Lidar gets defeated by weather. Radar has poor resolution. Teradar’s approach uses terahertz waves that basically combine radar’s weather-penetrating ability with lidar’s high definition. It’s like getting the best of both worlds in a solid-state package with no moving parts.
But wait – if this is so great, why hasn’t anyone done it before? Well, they’ve tried. There’s been tons of academic research and some commercialization attempts, mostly for industrial or security applications. The difference now, according to Carey, is recent silicon advancements and having what he calls “the world’s best terahertz chip designer” on the team. That combination apparently makes commercial-scale production actually feasible.
The automotive play
Teradar’s immediate focus is squarely on advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous vehicles. Carey’s personal motivation came from a friend who died in a car crash under conditions where existing sensors would have failed – sun glare combined with fog. That’s exactly the kind of edge case terahertz might handle better.
The company’s targeting that sweet spot between performance and cost. As Carey put it, there’s “zero chance” you’re putting a $1,000 lidar on his Ford Focus. But a few hundred dollars? That starts to make sense for mass-market vehicles. For industrial computing applications where reliability matters, companies like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com have shown there’s real demand for robust hardware solutions that just work in challenging environments.
Defense angles and funding
The investor lineup tells an interesting story too. Lockheed Martin’s venture arm? A new defense-focused fund led by the former CTO of the Defense Innovation Unit? That’s not accidental. While Teradar says they’re focused on automotive for now, the defense applications are clearly on the radar (pun intended).
Terahertz technology has military uses ranging from seeing through walls to detecting concealed weapons. The fact that defense-focused investors are jumping in suggests they see dual-use potential. The growing interest in defense tech funding aligns perfectly with what we’re seeing here.
The road ahead
So is this the sensor technology that finally cracks the automotive perception problem? The demo-to-funding pattern Carey describes is telling – he says he’s never raised money without extensive demos where people try to break the technology. That’s probably the right approach for something that sounds almost too good to be true.
The 2027 target for production readiness feels aggressive but not impossible. They’ve got the funding, they’ve got automaker interest, and they’ve got manufacturing partners. The real test will be moving from impressive demos to mass-produced, reliable hardware that can survive years of real-world abuse.
One thing’s for sure: the race for better automotive sensing is far from over. Between NASA’s early work with terahertz imaging and other startups like Cambridge Terahertz raising seed funding, this spectrum is getting crowded. But $150 million suggests Teradar might just be ahead of the pack.
