Paris, France, headquartered Prophesee has raises €20m to launch Mantara and continue to build its dual-use civil and defence business. This is a fully integrated drone detection system built on event-based vision and AI. At its heart of is a software platform, Hearth, purpose-built for event-based sensors, embedded with AI models for continuous over-the-air updates in the field.
Mantara is an IDS Imaging Development Systems camera from the uEye EVS camera line integrated with Prophesee’s motion sensors, where each pixel responds independently, in microseconds. Fast, erratic targets that blur or vanish between frames on a conventional camera remain perfectly visible and fully characterizable by Mantara in all environments. This capability is rooted in a bio-mimetic design inspired by the human visual system. The eye does not record the world in full. Instead, it captures sparse, essential signals, and the brain reconstructs and interprets what matters.
“In counter-drone missions, the best camera is not the one that sees everything. It is the one that delivers exactly what you need to read a scene in real time, make the right call, and stay ahead of a threat that never stops evolving,” says Jean Ferré, CEO of Prophesee.
Hearth does the sensor fusion and is backward compatible with different generations of Prophesee sensors.
“The next decade of event-based vision is built simultaneously on three levels: intelligence embedded in the sensor, complete end-to-end systems like Mantara, and Hearth as the foundation for everyone building on our technology. OpenEB and the SDK brought us here; but Hearth is the platform for what comes next,” says Thibaut Willeman, VP Product.
Mantara is suitable for civil as well as defence uses.
Funds were raised led by French fund Critical Path Ventures, with participation from existing shareholders. Prophesee is now held by a substantial majority of French shareholders.
