Software company Silexica has raised $18m (£13.5m) from venture capitalists to develop a new suite of tools to support autonomous vehicles.

Self-driving cars are set to be one of the major disruptive tech advances during the next decade and Silexica is now fast tracking the development of software in the market to deliver a high-performance platform for sophisticated use cases, such as artificial intelligence and robotic process automation. This has been driven by the need for rapid data processing and to support trillions of actions in real time.

Silexica was only founded back in 2014 but has now raised $28m from investors in total. The company set out with a mission to deliver in a step change in the functionality of software testing tools as it believed traditional solutions were no longer able to keep pace with the complex nature of high level programmes.

"We created SLX to support software professionals facing the biggest challenge in the industry — programming heterogeneous supercomputers," Silexica CEO Maximilian Odendahl said in an official statement. "SLX is truly adding value to customers in delivering performance improvements and system insights on some of the most advanced computers being created."

The latest round of venture capital investment from third parties including EQT Ventures Fund will allow to Silexica to enhance its SLX offering, in addition to creating a new platform that will be able to support the complex simulations that industrial users need to run to gain a complete understanding of software before it is officially deployed.

Odendahl added: "This funding round will enable us to strengthen existing and upcoming SLX tools and solutions. In addition, it will see us develop an industry first, vendor-neutral, multi-application Simulation Platform to help OEMs and all members of the supply chain optimize and integrate software provided for complex systems such as autonomous vehicles."