The Sheffield-based firm has a unique approach to autonomous machinery, trying to emulate the brain processes of insects to give AI chips the advantage of what the company describes as 600 million years of evolution.“By mimicking nature’s genius to enable machines to move like natural creatures we are redefining the global market for machine autonomy,” said David Rajan, CEO, Opteran. The company claims it is setting the new standard for AI and that its technology has applications across a multitude of industries.“We expect Opteran Natural Intelligence to become the standard solution for autonomy anywhere on the ground or in the air, on any machine, large or ultra-small, because it combines such sophisticated natural brain capabilities in a light-weight, efficient package,” Rajan added. The company previously raised £2.1m in a funding round back in November 2020.Northern Gritstone, which like Opteran was formed as a spinout from the University of Sheffield – as well as Leeds and Manchester universities –