U.K.-based autonomous vehicle startup FiveAI Inc. announced today that it has raised an additional $18 million to develop a self-driving taxi service using its technology.

The Series A financing is in addition to the $17 million grant the company already received as part of its partnership with the U.K.’s StreetWise transportation project, which supports the development of self-driving car technology in London.

The round was led by Lakestar Capital, and it also included participation from existing investors Amadeus Capital Partners, Notion Capital and Kindred. FiveAI has now raised a total of $37.7 million in financing.

FiveAI will use its funding to execute a two-part plan. First, the company plans to develop its artificial intelligence further to produce safe driverless vehicles that can travel on city streets without human assistance. Second, FiveAI will use that technology to build a fleet of self-driving taxis in major European cities, starting with London.

Stan Boland, FiveAI’s co-founder and chief executive, conceded that London has excellent public transit infrastructure, but he said there are still a number of journeys that are being served by individual transport. Those journeys will be FiveAI’s first target, which Boland said he believes will have an immediate positive effect on London’s transportation landscape.

“In the short term, from day one of service launch, the StreetWise project will increase public transport usage, reduce congestion and emissions, and make our urban areas more liveable for all,” Boland said.

FiveAI is only one of many AI startups looking to carve out a chunk of the rapidly growing self-driving car industry, but the company has more competition to worry about than other startups. Several of the largest tech companies in the world are also working on their own autonomous vehicle projects, including Alphabet Inc. and Tesla Inc. FiveAI will also have to contend with other transportation services, most notably Uber Technologies Inc., which is also working on its own self-driving car taxi service.

In an interview with The Telegraph in June, Boland acknowledged that his mission to take on Uber “sounds ridiculously ambitious,” but he also said that self-driving cars are “probably the most exciting thing happening in engineering and computer science at the moment,” and he has no plans to give up.

Boland said that FiveAI plans to start testing self-driving taxis on the streets of London as early as the second half of 2019.

Photo: FiveAI