Mobility analytics company StreetLight Data Inc. has announced that it has closed US$10m in Series C funding, which will allow it to move on to the next phase of growth and further develop data-driven platforms that reveal real-world travel patterns.
StreetLight Data is a seven year-old San Francisco-based technology company that transforms the massive amount of geospatial data produced by mobile devices into useful transportation behavior information.
The company’s proprietary InSight platform is an easy-to-use online SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) tool designed for smart city leaders, urban planners and the transportation industry. InSight combines big data with processing and industry-targeted analytic tools that provides the essential information to support critical planning, investment, infrastructure and policy decisions.
StreetLight Data aggregates and applies proprietary processing techniques to big mobile data from millions of mobile devices, connected cars and trucks, IoT (Internet of Things) sensors, and geospatial databases, creating a suite of powerful analytics tools that analyze mobility behavior.
Since launching in 2012, the InSight platform has developed the concepts of smart cities, machine learning and data-driven decision making into a real-world analysis tool, enabling billions of dollars of infrastructure investment to be spent in more impactful and informed ways.
StreetLight has helped transform the practice of transportation planning with hundreds of clients using InSight software, including: transportation agencies at federal, state, regional and city levels; transportation, engineering and consulting firms; and private transportation companies, such as rideshare, auto maker and IoT organizations.
The Series C financing will allow StreetLight Data to invest in new product innovations that it hopes will create the analytics required to tackle the biggest questions confronting the transportation and mobility industry, including:
• Climate changing emissions from transportation;
• The impact of new modes of transportation, such as rideshare, on communities;
• Cost effective and resilient infrastructure investment;
• How to launch autonomous vehicles in socially positive and productive ways.
The new financing will also accelerate the company’s targeted geographic expansion.
The oversubscribed round included significant participation from new and existing investors, including: Osage University Partners, ENGIE New Ventures, DTCP (Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners) and other undisclosed investors.
Veery Maxwell, director at Energy Innovation: Policy and Technology, will be joining the StreetLight board of directors in conjunction with this financing.
“We’ve seen the adoption of InSight accelerate over the past two years. The transportation industry has turned the corner in accepting big data solutions for basic planning support,” said StreetLight Data’s CEO, Laura Schewel.
“What’s more exciting is seeing our leading clients changing their core practices due to the availability of nearly infinite analytics from InSight. This kind of data-driven transformation is not a luxury; it’s a requirement to manage the ever-increasing complexity, risks and rewards of our fast-changing transportation and city systems.”
Scott Pinnizotto, ENGIE Investment director and StreetLight board member, commented, “As new transportation trends converge, from car sharing, autonomous vehicles and electric cars, to the energy transformation of massive amounts of distributed renewables with variable production on the grid, the global need for data-driven infrastructure planning has become more critical than ever. StreetLight Data is building a tool to support a sustainable approach to these rapidly evolving, ever-more interdependent systems.”
