In a world racing toward autonomous vehicles, Europe has taken a different path – demanding not just performance, but explainability, safety, and full legal compliance.

Motor Ai is meeting that challenge head-on. The company has announced a $20 million seed funding round to bring its certified, neuroscience-driven technology into full deployment, starting with German public roads.

The seed round was led by Segenia Capital and eCapital, with participation from mobility-focused angels. That reflects the national significance of the technology. The new capital will support hiring, commercial rollouts, and expansion.

As the only German company, Motor Ai has built an intelligence for Level 4 autonomous driving that reasons through data, rather than just reacting.

At the heart of the system is a cognitive architecture rooted in active inference, a model from neuroscience that allows vehicles to make structured, transparent decisions. That’s how Motor Ai makes autonomous technology transparent and aligned with human and regulatory expectations.

Roy Uhlmann, Motor Ai CEO and co-founder, says: “This type of AI enables the highest safety standard in autonomous driving – as is already legally standardized in Europe.”

As other providers pursue autonomy through brute-force data collection, end-to-end solutions and black-box prediction models, Motor Ai has taken a different approach: one that is deeply explainable and certifiable on the world’s highest safety levels.

Its 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.

This regulatory-first design is already moving from the lab to the street.

This year, vehicles equipped with Motor Ai’s Level 4 system for autonomous driving will start operations in several German districts. The vehicles are supervised on board by a safety driver to be taken out during 2026.

These deployments include both, the full onboard autonomy stack and the technical supervision required by law – giving local transit authorities a fully operable path to autonomous transport without compromising control or safety.

For the team behind Motor Ai, these milestones are the product of years of deep technical development including regulatory groundwork.

Since 2017, the company has built its entire autonomy stack in-house from Berlin, working in close dialogue with certification authorities and federal certifiers.

Uhlmann says: “Our solution meets key requirements for transparency and traceability of autonomous driving decisions, as required by authorities. That clearly distinguishes us from US providers and at the same time optimally complies with European regulatory requirements.”

That trust is becoming increasingly important. As autonomous systems move closer to everyday use, 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’s architecture is designed to answer those questions clearly, legally, and reliably.

Lucas Merle, principal at eCapital, says: “This ‘Made in Germany’ in-house development reduces inter-dependencies while strengthening Europe’s ability to operate in critical innovative technology.”

The company’s early traction is a signal of what may come next. With road testing already in place, Motor Ai is well positioned to define the next chapter of autonomy – based on intelligence for scaling in real-world conditions.

Michael Janßen, general partner, Segenia Capital, says: “In a regulated environment like Europe, trust and compliance are non-negotiable.

“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.”

Looking ahead, Motor Ai plans to grow its engineering, safety and type approval teams, expand deployment partnerships with municipalities, and begin cross-border regulatory expansion into other European markets.

Motor Ai’s long-term vision: a certified, explainable driver system that can serve as infrastructure for safe, transparent autonomy – one that Europe can both build on, and believe in.

Uhlmann, explaining the fundamentally different approach Germany and the EU takes in comparison to other markets, says: “We don’t think the future of autonomy in Europe should be a mystery.

“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.”