Canadian developer of AI-based (artificial intelligence) traffic management technology Miovision has completed a C$120m (US$90.66m) minority funding round led by Telus Ventures, which will help the company develop the platform that cities worldwide will use to measure, manage, and optimise traffic congestion and safety.
The Telus Ventures investment was supported by a syndicate of investors led by McRock Capital, which invests exclusively in industrial IoT (Internet of Things) companies, and includes both new and existing Miovision investors that chose to increase their support for the company. Funds raised from this round will allow Miovision to accelerate the growth of its smart traffic platform, hiring the talent needed to quickly develop new product capabilities and bring them to market. The company aims to hire more than 100 new employees in 2020, increasing its Canadian workforce by 50%, which will accelerate its development of its platform that uses computer vision, AI and advanced modelling to help cities modernise their approach to traffic management.
Telus will now hold two positions on Miovision’s board of directors joining existing Board members, including: McRock’s Whitney Rockley, and Ken MacKinnon from early investors MacKinnon, Bennett & Co. and former BlackBerry vice president of strategic alliances, Chris Wormald. As part of its investment, Telus will also become the preferred wireless provider for Miovision worldwide. Leveraging Telus dedicated IoT network, purpose-built for IoT connected devices, Miovision-equipped traffic signals will allow cities to remotely access, analyse, and action data generated at intersections.
Miovision was established in 2005, bringing to market the Scout unit, a portable product that accurately gathers and analyses traffic data. In 2017, the company launched TrafficLink, a smart traffic platform that allows cities to modernize their existing analogue traffic signals by adding connectivity and video-based, multimodal traffic measurement and analysis. Miovision’s suite of products and services help cities to better understand, manage, and optimise traffic, simultaneously reducing congestion and emissions, while improving traffic safety.
As urban areas grow, the pressing need to better manage traffic has helped Miovision achieve a revenue CAGR of 37.4% over the last 10 years, while its products have processed more than 23 million hours of traffic video, counting more than nine billion vehicles in the process. With offices in Kitchener (Canada) and Cologne in Germany, Miovision currently serves over 17,000 municipalities worldwide.
“This funding round will help us realise our goal of becoming the platform by which cities everywhere measure, manage and optimise traffic,” said Miovision’s co-founder and CEO, Kurtis McBride. “I’m proud that our investors, including a world-leading communications company like Telus, are as excited about our vision as we are and want to be a part of it.”
Rich Osborn, managing partner at Telus Ventures, said, “We are taking bold steps to improve the lives of Canadians by investing in Smart City technology that will connect and empower municipalities to build stronger, safer communities. With our investment and Miovision’s technology, we can further advance our goal of enabling remarkable human outcomes for Canadians, and citizens around the world, by easing traffic congestion, reducing carbon emissions and making intersections safer for vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians.”
