Ubiquity Founder: Sebastian Bauer of Ubicept (unleashing the power of AI for perception/autonomous machines)
Learn how Ubicept founder applied his PhD work on low-light sensing to offer customers super low-light & fast-motion cameras/vision.
Today we spotlight a founder who leverages software beyond the screen to transform an industry. As always, each Ubiquity founder has their own nerdy background (we define nerdiness as having a deep obsession) that led to founding their startup.
Meet Sebastian Bauer, CEO & co-founder of Ubicept, a technology that combines next-generation image sensors with advanced computer vision algorithms to enhance vision in all environments. Ubiquity Ventures co-led Ubicept’s pre-seed round.
Can you sum up what Ubicept does in one sentence?
Ubicept revolutionizes vision/perception so it can finally work in challenging environments.
Tell us more about Ubicept’s product.
There is a new class of image sensors that capture each individual photon, or light particle, with an extremely high time resolution. The good news is that this allows you to see in challenging low light and fast-motion environments. It also allows you to see in super dark and super bright environments simultaneously, meaning cameras don't need to adapt to these brightness variations.
We don’t make these sensors ourselves, and when you capture these light particles with extremely high time resolution, you end up with a ton of data that is somewhat unmanageable. This is exactly where Ubicept comes into play: we convert terabytes of data volume every second into usable video output. This is our core product, but we are also working with users of the technology to make sure we are targeting their exact pain points. We are super excited about our FLARE camera we rolled out at CES in January 2025: single-photon imaging in high resolution and in color.
What is the story behind the founding of Ubicept?
I'm an engineer by training, and I've always found myself working somewhere along the line between groundbreaking new research and making things happen as an engineer by bringing technology into the real world.
Throughout my career, I've always focused on new and (at the time) exotic types of imaging. It was during my time doing research as a postdoc at the University of Wisconsin that I realized that what we were working on was actually becoming ready for “prime time”. There was a nice intersection between the readiness of our algorithms and the hardware availability.
I personally went through the National Science Foundation's I-Corps program. They offer a grant which is given to a professor, and the money is expected to be used for a grad student or postdoc to travel across the country for seven weeks, during which time they will be expected to complete at least 100 customer interviews with actual users of technology. This changed my perspective; when researchers build cool technology, they often assume that everyone will want to buy it and that there’s a huge market - but this is often not the case. This program trained us to get in touch with real users and figure out whether the technology truly has financial value, meaning people are willing to pay for the solution. This was quite a mindset change, but I think it has served the company really well.
How did you notice the need for these computer vision solutions?
It was during my time in the iCorps program that we learned that seeing in low light, in extreme brightness variations, and in fast-motion environments were all issues. Even though we weren't super focused on solving these problems back then, because of the program they were on our radar.
Ubicept also came out of stealth at CES in 2023, and TechCrunch wrote about us. This generated a lot of interest, and through this wave of PR, we had a lot of companies reach out to see how we can work with them. In summary, through many conversations with customers and end-users, we learned that seeing in challenging environments is really a pain point for many of them.
We think of nerds as people who are obsessed with something. What are you nerdy about or obsessed with?
I'm really obsessed about getting to the core of things - outlining the very nature of something without any messaging and clutter. I think that's what sticks with people the most; a lot of people see the awesome videos on our website, for example, and I think the magic behind the scenes is really that we are capturing each light particle, each photon, with extremely high time resolution.
I’m also somewhat of an aviation geek. I travel a lot for my job, but even just the technology side of aircraft is fascinating to me as an engineer. Plus, I can’t really wrap my head around the fact that humans have found a way to get to the other end of the world in less than a day!
What would you tell your past self if you could give them advice?
Plow through. It's not going to be easy, but it's going to be highly rewarding. When we started a couple of years ago, we had only our ideas and some rough mental models, but as we’ve grown over the last couple of years, we’re realizing our vision is actually true. I'm certain that this type of imaging - perceiving single photons and making them usable for computer vision applications - is the future.
It is a little challenging, though; I think our long-term vision has played out extremely well, but the everyday small decisions are kind of more difficult to hit: “Should I create that demo? Should I reach out to that person? Would our engineering team prefer to have more time to come up with a fully developed solution and only then talk to customers?”
I'm also not claiming that we were always right in these decisions, but the long-term vision definitely holds and is becoming true.
What’s your advice to budding technical founders who haven’t yet taken the leap to launch their new company?
I think it’s important to be mindful of whether you really want to do it. The truth is: startups are more likely to fail than to be successful. People should be aware of that and make a conscious decision about whether they want to spend the next few years of their lives trying to figure it all out.
Other than that, it's about being open-minded and talking to as many people as necessary. When I had the idea to spin out Ubicept, I didn't know how to go about that. It was just a startup idea, and I had always been interested in startups and making groundbreaking research available to everyone, rather than having some ivory tower research that never makes its way into reality.
Plow through, and see if there's a path there. But again, make a conscious decision about whether you really want to put your time into that. There are all kinds of things that can bring down a startup, and it's not necessarily just the technology.
Ubiquity Ventures — led by Sunil Nagaraj — is a seed-stage venture capital firm focused on startups solving real-world physical problems with "software beyond the screen", often using smart hardware or machine learning.
If your startup fits this description, fill out the 60-second Ubiquity pitch form and you’ll hear back shortly.