The developer of an AI-based connected mobility platform for transportation agencies, Waycare, has raised US$7.25m in Series A funding that will help accelerate the company’s expansion efforts in North America and Europe, along with enhancements to its cloud-based system.
Founded in Israel and with a Los Angeles office, Waycare is an artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud-based platform that empowers transportation agencies to make smarter decisions related to traffic management and traffic safety. The company makes use of vast amounts of data coming from the existing transportation network and in-vehicle data sources to provide actionable new insights. Waycare’s first commercial deployment with Southern Nevada in 2017 demonstrated improvements in reducing both primary and secondary crashes, also improving response times and multi-agency communication. Since then, the company has expanded to Florida, Ohio, and other states across the USA. Waycare plans to expand its services in Europe and Israel in 2020.
Waycare is a cloud-based SaaS (software-as-a-service) platform harnessing data from a rich variety of sources such as GPS navigation apps, connected vehicles (CVs), and infrastructure to provide actionable insights that improve traffic and safety management operations. Using AI and sophisticated algorithms, the platform provides predictive insights to identify dangerous roads where future crashes are likely to occur, empowering proactive decision-making. The company aims to shape the future of urban mobility, enabling cities to take full control of their roads and directly communicate with other departments and vehicles throughout their transportation networks. Waycare also serves as the foundation for future adoption of new mobility solutions such as autonomous vehicles (AVs), microtransit, scooters, and advanced public transit.
The new funding has been led by SJF Ventures, with participation from UpWest, Next Gear Ventures, Innogy, Spider Capital, Goldbell, Zymestic Solutions, and Janom. In addition to the new round of investment, Waycare has also announced that Jim Ray, the former senior advisor to the US Transportation Secretary, Elaine Chao, will be joining its Board of Directors, bringing decades of experience in transportation and infrastructure policy. Dan Geballe, partner at SJF Ventures, also joined the Waycare Board.
“Transportation agencies across the world are grappling with the burden of improving traffic safety and congestion that affects their city’s residents, while at the same time meeting the demands of rapid changes in the mobility sector,” said Waycare’s CEO, Noam Maital. “We are fortunate to be at the crossroads of serving the public sector, while partnering with the wider mobility ecosystem to help cities and states build the next generation of transportation operating systems.”
New board member, Geballe, said, “Over the past decade, we’ve seen a transformation not only in the amount of data coming from various mobility modes such as connected vehicles, but also in the advancement of artificial intelligence technologies to interpret and learn from data. Waycare is a prime example of how AI can be deployed in the public sector to better leverage data and existing infrastructure to improve outcomes; in this case reducing traffic, injuries, and deaths on the roads.”
