When we develop our safety technology, it’s always based on understanding human behaviour and rooted in decades of safety research. Our aim is to help you be a better driver and reduce the risk of a crash happening – eventually, we aim for cars that no longer crash.

With that in mind, we’ve now made a strategic investment in CorrActions, an Israeli deep-tech brain monitoring AI start-up, which has developed a technology that the company believes will disrupt brain activity monitoring and may help us understand drivers even better.

The AI-powered software built by CorrActions can detect abnormalities in the cognitive state of drivers and passengers, based on micro muscle movements that reflect brain activity. By using existing sensors in, for example, the steering wheel, such movements can hint at a variety of cognitive symptoms, including a driver being distracted, intoxicated or overly tired.

Through the Volvo Cars Tech Fund, our corporate venture capital arm, we’re leading CorrActions’ latest funding round after testing their software and aim to continue collaborating going forward. Our Tech Fund makes strategic investments to help start-ups to thrive and jointly accelerate the transformation of the global mobility industry in areas such as safety, electrification, digitisation and new ways to access a car.

“With the Tech Fund, we aim to be a strategic partner of choice for exciting start-ups that can help boost our position as a tech leader in our industry,” said Alexander Petrofski, Head of the Volvo Cars Tech Fund. “CorrActions fits the bill perfectly and focusses on a mission that is close to our heart: making cars and the people in and around them safer.”

CorrActions piqued our interest because they clearly try to solve the same issues as our safety engineers. Our decades of research teach us that distraction and tiredness are facts of life, and that you may not always be at your best when driving, for whatever reason. And in traffic, it takes only a few seconds for the unthinkable to happen.

The CorrActions technology has the potential to be a highly relevant complement to our future safety systems. As a result, we’ve decided to take a stake in CorrActions to support the further development and commercialisation of its technology.

The investment made by our Tech Fund is part of a Series A funding round by CorrActions. Further financial details will not be disclosed.