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Lidar startup Luminar to go public via $3.4 billion SPAC merger
Luminar, the lidar startup that burst onto the autonomous vehicle scene in April 2017 after operating for years in secrecy, is merging with special purpose acquisition company Gores Metropoulos Inc., with a post-deal market valuation of $3.4 billion.
Gores Metropoulos, which is listed on the Nasdaq exchange, is a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, sponsored by an affiliate of The Gores Group, the global investment firm founded in the late 1980s by Alec Gores.
The SPAC merger comes just three months after Luminar hit a critical milestone and announced that Volvo would start producing vehicles in 2022 equipped with its lidar and a perception stack. The Luminar technology will be used to deploy an automated driving system for highways.
Luminar founder and CEO Austin Russell told TechCrunch that they wanted to go public at some point. But the momentum from the Volvo deal along with interest within public markets led the company to take the SPAC route, Russell said.
Luminar is the latest startup — and second lidar company — to turn to SPACs this summer in lieu of a traditional IPO process. In June, Velodyne Lidar struck a deal to merge with special purpose acquisition company Graf Industrial Corp., with a market value of $1.8 billion. Four electric vehicle startups have also skipped the traditional IPO path in recent months, opting instead to go public through a merger agreement with a SPAC, which are also known as blank check companies. Canoo, Fisker Inc., Lordstown Motors and Nikola Corp. have gone public via a SPAC merger this spring and summer.
Luminar said it was able to raise $170 million in private investment in public equity, or PIPE, by institutional investors, including Alec Gores, Van Tuyl Companies, Peter Thiel, Volvo Cars Tech Fund, Crescent Cove, Moore Strategic Ventures, GoPro founder Nick Woodman and VectoIQ, with the majority of the major existing investors participating. The transaction will also include a balance of about $400 million cash that has been held by Gores Metropoulos.
Once the transaction closes, Luminar will maintain its name and will be listed on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol LAZR. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2020. Russell will continue to serve as CEO and Tom Fennimore will continue to serve as CFO. Alec Gores will join the Luminar board of directors upon closing of the transaction.
“This milestone is pivotal not just for us, but also for the larger automotive industry,” said Russell said in a statement. “Eight years ago, we took on a problem to which most thought there would be no technically or commercially viable solution. We worked relentlessly to build the tech from the ground up to solve it and partnered directly with the leading global automakers to show the world what’s possible. Today, we are making our next industry leap through our new long-term partnership with Gores Metropoulos, a team that has deep experience in technology and automotive and shares our vision of a safe autonomous future powered by Luminar.”
Luminar was founded by Russell in 2012, but it operated in secret for years until coming out of stealth in spring 2017 with backing from Thiel and others. Russell, who is now 25 years old, worked on the Luminar technology as a Thiel fellow, which gives young people $100,000 over two years to drop out of college and pursue their ideas.
Luminar raised $250 million prior to the SPAC announcement. The company now has 350 employees and operations in Silicon Valley as well as a factory in Orlando. Luminar said it plans to open an office in Detroit as well.
Lidar, light detection and ranging radar, measures distance using laser light to generate a highly accurate 3D map of the world around the car. The sensor is widely considered critical to the commercial deployment of autonomous vehicles. Automakers have also begun to view lidar as an important sensor to be used to beef up the capabilities and safety of its advanced driver assistance systems in the new cars trucks and SUVs available to consumers.
Volvo is one of those automakers. Luminar’s Iris lidar sensors — which TechCrunch has described as about the size of really thick sandwich and one-third smaller than its previous iterations — will be integrated in the roof of Volvo’s production vehicles, beginning in 2022.
Luminar also announced Monday that it has hired 16 people who worked on Samsung’s now dissolved DRVLINE team. Samsung once described the DRVLINE platform as an “open, modular, and scalable hardware and software-based platform” for the autonomous driving market. Earlier this year, TechCrunch reported that Samsung shuttered the DRVLINE/Smart Machines team.
Those hires are directly tied to Luminar’s strategy to capitalize on what Russell believes is the nearer term application of lidar in production vehicles, not robotaxis. Luminar is still working with companies seeking to commercialize robotaxis, but he believes it’s a longer-term play.
“I think that there are huge, long-term promises associated with robotaxis, but I really see that market taking off in the 2030s as opposed to the 2020s,” Russell said. Lidar used to support active driver safety system will be provides the kind of volume and economies of scale that are going to be driving this business, he added.
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Lucid’s new all-electric sedan will let owners send energy to their homes by mid-2021
Lucid Motors said Wednesday that its upcoming all-electric Air sedan will have fast-charging capability that will let owners add 300 miles of range to the battery in 20 minutes and a home-charging unit that will allow owners to send energy from their car to their home.
Lucid said it is able to hit this benchmark because the vehicle has a 900-volt electrical architecture when combined with its lithium-ion cells, battery and thermal management system and powertrain efficiency. Most electric vehicles — with the exception of the Porsche Taycan and future Kia EVs — have a 400-volt architecture.
There are limitations to this speedy charging; a driver would need to access the correct DC fast charger, which are not exactly abundant at the moment. However, this capability does check an important box for EV owners. While the Lucid Air will have an eye-popping range of more than 500 miles — if its estimates are verified by the EPA — the fast charging capability helps remove any lingering range anxiety and make long-distance travel more desirable.
The company revealed a number of other details surrounding charging, including that the Air will use the universal CCS (combined charging system) connector standard, which makes it compatible to public chargers. The vehicle will have a peak charging rate of over 300kW and a 19.2kW AC onboard charger that can support AC charging speeds up to 80 miles per hour.
Lucid also announced a partnership with Electrify America, VW Group’s U.S.-based charging network. Owners of the Air will be given three years of free charging at Electrify America chargers, which includes DC fast charging.
Lucid also has built out a number of home-based charging features, including a partnership with Qmerit on installation of its connected home charging station. But perhaps the most interesting feature is that Lucid has built “vehicle-to-everything” charging capabilities into the Air and home charging unit. This means that the vehicle will be able to execute bi-directional charging between vehicles and even from the Air back to the owner’s home. Lucid specifically mentioned that it would allow owners to provide a temporary energy reserve for their homes, including “off grid vacation properties,” a weirdly specific detail that must be popular with the luxury EV owner demographic. Lucid told TechCrunch that this capability will become available in mid 2021.
Lucid said it also plans to repurpose older batteries for energy storage. The first prototype is already installed at Lucid’s Silicon Valley headquarters, where a team is working on producing a range of energy storage products.
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How Moovit went from opportunity to a $900M exit in 8 years
Omar Téllez is a private investor in several tech companies based in LatAm and Silicon Valley. A member of Niantic’s executive team, he was previously president of Moovit.
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In May 2020, Intel announced its purchase of Moovit, a mobility as a service (MaaS) solutions company known for an app that stitched together GPS, traffic, weather, crime and other factors to help mass transit riders reduce their travel times, along with time and worry.
According to a release, Intel believes combining Moovit’s data repository with the autonomous vehicle solution stack for its Mobileye subsidiary will strengthen advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and help create a combined $230 billion total addressable market for data, MaaS and ADAS .
Before he was a member of Niantic’s executive team, private investor Omar Téllez was president of Moovit for the six years leading up to its acquisition. In this guest post for Extra Crunch, he offers a look inside Moovit’s early growth strategy, its efforts to achieve product-market fit and explains how rapid growth in Latin America sparked the company’s rapid ascent.
In late 2011, Uri Levine, a good friend from Silicon Valley and founder of Waze, asked me to visit Israel to meet Nir Erez and Roy Bick, two entrepreneurs who had launched an application they had called “the Waze of public transportation.”
By then, Waze was already in conversations to be sold (Google would finally buy it for $1.1 billion) and Uri was thinking about his next step. He was on the board of directors of Moovit (then called Tranzmate) and thought they could use a lot of help to grow and expand internationally, following Waze’s path.
At the time, I was part of Synchronoss Technologies’ management team. After Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank took us public in 2006, AT&T and Apple presented us with an idea that would change the world. It was so innovative and secret that we had to sign NDAs and personal noncompete agreements to work with them. Apple was preparing to launch the first iPhone and needed a system where users could activate devices from the comfort of their homes. As such, Synchronoss’ stock became very attractive to the capital markets and ours became the best public offering of 2006.
After six years with Synchronoss while also making some forays into the field of entrepreneurship, I was ready for another challenge. With that spirit in mind, I got on the plane for Israel.
I will always remember the landing at Ben Gurion airport. After 12 hours traveling from JFK, I was called to the front of the immigration line:
“Hey! The guy in the Moovit T-shirt, please come forward!”
For a second, I thought I was in trouble, but then the immigration officer said, “Welcome to Israel! We are proud of our startups and we want the world to know that we are a high-tech powerhouse,” before he returned my passport and said goodbye.
I was completely amazed by his attitude and wondered if I really knew what I was getting into.
The opportunity in front of Moovit
At first glance, the numbers seemed very attractive. In 2012, there were roughly seven billion people in the world and only a billion vehicles. Thus, many more people used mass public transport than private and users had to face not only the uncertainty of when a transport would arrive, but also what might happen to them while waiting (e.g., personal safety issues, weather, etc.). Adding more uncertainty: Many people did not know the fastest way to get from point A to point B. As designed, mass public transport was a real nightmare for users.
Uri advised us to “fall in love with the problem and not with the solution,” which is what we tried to do at Moovit. Although Waze had spawned a new transportation paradigm and helped reduce traffic in big cities, mass transit was a much bigger monster that consumed an average of two hours of each day for some people, which adds up to 37 days of each year*!
What would you do if someone told you that in addition to your vacation days, an app could help you find 18 extra days off work next year by cutting your transportation time in half?
* Assumes 261 working days a year, 14 productive hours per day.
Image Credits: Moovit (opens in a new window)
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Elon Musk says Tesla is open to licensing Autopilot, supplying powertrains and batteries to other automakers
Tesla CEO Elon Musk noted on Twitter on Tuesday night that the automaker would be “open to licensing software and supplying powertrains & batteries” to other automakers. Musk added that that would even include Autopilot, the advanced driver assistance software that Tesla offers to provide intelligent cruise control in a number of different driving scenarios.
Musk was addressing a Teslarati article about how German automakers are looking to close the technology gap between themselves and Tesla when it comes to producing EVs. Volkswagen Chairman Herbert Diess has in past comments expressed admiration for Musk and Tesla’s accomplishments on multiple occasions.
VW has created its own EV platform, which it intends to use as the base for a number of different electric cars, ranging from sport sedans to SUVs. The company is also openly pursuing licensing its MEB platform to other automakers, and struck such a deal with Ford last July for the American automaker’s European business.
Musk says that Tesla’s interest in licensing stems from its underlying goal, which is “to accelerate sustainable energy, not crush competitors,” according to his tweet. This isn’t the first time the automaker has indicated a willingness to be more open in pursuit of that goal: In 2014, Musk penned a blog post announcing that Tesla would be making its intellectual property freely available to “anyone who, in good faith, wants to use [its] technology.”
Of course, that hasn’t stopped Tesla from taking aim at potential competitors via legal action on occasion — it filed suit against electric automaker Rivian and four of its former employees last week, alleging theft of trade secrets and poaching key talent.
A platform licensing or supplier relationship would be an entirely different arrangement, of course, and one with plenty of precedent in the automaker industry. Nor would it necessarily negatively impact Tesla’s own auto sales, as the company offers a number of other selling points above and beyond its underlying powertrain and battery tech.
At the time of Volkswagen’s announcement, the German automaker said it expects it could make up to $20 billion in revenue through the MEB deal with Ford, with a significant chunk of that coming from MEB parts and components supply. Tesla could realize similar gains but perhaps amplified globally, especially if it can ramp powertrain and battery production beyond the capacity needs of its own vehicle demand capacity.
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SaaS startup Swoop raises $3.2M to modernize mom-and-pop transportation companies
Chauffeured group transportation — the vehicles used for corporate outings, special events and even weddings — is a fragmented industry, with hundreds of small operators that rely on analog systems to book customers. Now in this era of COVID-19, these operators are being squeezed as travel and tourism have dwindled and companies have opted to have employees work from home.
One Los Angeles-based transportation booking startup called Swoop aims to bring these small, local operators into the digital age with a new software-as-a-service platform that it says is helping them adapt in this COVID-19 era. The startup, loaded with an injection of capital, is ramping up its SaaS product in hopes of tapping into a marketplace where customers spend $40 billion annually.
Swoop has raised $3.2 million in a seed funding round led by Signia Venture Partners, South Park Commons and several angel investors, including former Uber CPO Manik Gupta; Kevin Weil, co-creator of Libra at Facebook; Kim Fennel, a former Uber executive; and Elizabeth Weil, former partner at Andreessen Horowitz and 137 Ventures.
“I’m fascinated about how operators are still running most of their business with pen and paper,” Swoop CEO and co-founder Amir Ghorbani said in a statement. Ghorbani has witnessed firsthand the constraints of these small operators. During high school and college, Ghorbani helped with his parents’ limousine business. The experience prompted him to seek a solution.
“I saw a huge opportunity to help these small mom and pop shops, in an under-digitized industry, where no operator has more than 1% market share,” Ghorbani added.
Ghorbani began by building a group transportation booking platform used by companies like Airbnb, Google and Nike. Through those bookings the companies saw an opportunity to build business management software for vehicle operators.
Swoop’s SaaS platform lets companies book and dispatch rides, track vehicles and communicate with customers. It also acts as a central hub for payments and other bookkeeping. The tool is designed to smooth out the booking process as well as increase vehicle utilization, which is currently at 4.9%, according to the company. Swoop also passes on to the operators using its SaaS tool leads from companies that use the booking platform.
For now, the focus is on local transportation companies, not public transit, which is a sector that Uber is chasing.
COVID-19, which has suspended most group outings, has upended these local transportation operators. Swoop says it has adjusted its platform to help these operators survive. The company told TechCrunch that it is helping operators repurpose their vehicles to ship goods rather than people. For instance, large vans once used for corporate outings can now be marketed to food wholesalers or companies that need local package delivery. The platform is also being used to connect operators with companies like Amazon that provide transportation to shuttle essential factory workers.
Swoop said COVID-19 might end up accelerating its business ramp as operators are being forced to evaluate their businesses and seek new ways to generate revenue and reduce costs.
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Tesla’s Megapack powers its small, but growing energy storage business
Tesla’s energy storage business picked up steam in the second quarter and even played a minor role in the company’s fourth consecutive quarter of profitability, according to earnings reported Wednesday.
Commercial and residential energy storage sales as well as solar are still mere slices of Tesla’s overall business, which is largely dominated by automotive. However, second-quarter results show some promise for energy storage, particularly Megapack, the utility-scale energy storage product that launched in 2019 and is modeled after the giant battery system it deployed in South Australia.
While Tesla does provide separate deployment stats for solar and energy storage, it combines the two when reporting revenue, making it impossible to fully measure the success of Megapack. However, Tesla made a point in its earnings statement to flag Megapack as a winner in the second quarter and noted that it turned a profit for the first time.
“There’s a lot of demand for the product and we’re growing the production rates as fast as we can,” Drew Baglino, senior vice president of powertrain and energy engineering, said during Wednesday’s earnings call.
For the past four years or so Tesla has been asking investors to view it as an energy company instead of just an automaker. Some analysts think that the real value in Tesla’s business will be when it actually achieves some level of parity between the two sides of the shop — a goal that Musk is also shooting for.
But energy storage and solar has remained in Tesla’s automotive shadow, despite assurances that these business products will eventually be equals. For now, energy storage remains a small, but growing, fraction of Tesla’s revenue.
CEO Elon Musk predicted its energy business would be roughly the same size at its automotive unit over the long term. He did not provide a timeline.
One product that Tesla is hoping will accelerate the growth of its energy storage business is Autobidder, the company’s machine-learning platform for automated energy trading.
Autobidder provides grid stabilization and ensures that things are “super smooth,” Musk said, adding that it is necessary in order to solve the sustainable energy problem
Overall, energy storage deployed was up 61% on a quarterly basis (from 260 megawatt hours to 419 megawatt hours) signs that the business is beginning to recover to levels before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Energy storage deployments in the second quarter were still only 1% higher than the same period last year, illustrating that Tesla still has a ways to go before it hits numbers reached in the third and fourth quarters of 2019.
Meanwhile, Tesla’s solar deployments shrank.
Tesla installed 27 MW of solar in the second quarter, down 23% from the previous quarter and off 7% from the same period last year. Some of that slippage is likely due to the economic slowdown and shelter in place orders that swept the U.S. in response to COVID-19.
Tesla became the leading solar installer in the United States with its acquisition of SolarCity but its position slipped as Sunrun and Vivint Solar surged in the U.S. market. Now, its looking to regain some of that ground with its Solar Roof, a new shingle-like product that has been development and testing for years. Tesla said Wednesday that installations of the Solar Roof roughly tripled in the second quarter compared to the first quarter. However, the company did not provide specific figures, making it unclear just how many Solar Roof installations it has completed.
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Gett raises $100M more to double down on its B2B on-demand ride business
A number of on-demand ride hailing companies are feeling the strain from reduced business, with many consumers still reluctant to travel, and especially to travel in surroundings that might increase the risk of spreading or catching the novel coronavirus. But today, one of the startups in the space is announcing a significant round of funding to continue growing in its target sector of corporate travel, underscoring where there may still be some existing and growing opportunities.
Gett, the London and Israel-based company that competes with the likes of Uber and many others to provide private car rides on-demand, has raised $100 million. Gett’s CEO and founder Dave Waiser told TechCrunch that the funding is all primary equity capital, and the company says it plans to use it to continue investing in its B2B business, which has been growing — not shrinking or staying flat — in the midst of the global health pandemic.
“The way people move around in cities is changing dramatically as a result of COVID-19 and businesses are seeking to optimise costs and to put in place efficient and safe ground travel solutions for their employees,” said Waiser, in a statement. “Our mobility software is helping businesses thrive by empowering people to be their best on the go. Being fully funded and reaching a key milestone in our profitability journey is an important step for the company. The proceeds will help us grow our unique corporate SaaS platform internationally, while we consider an IPO in the future, to further accelerate our expansion.”
The company turned operationally profitable in December 2019 and had said it planned to go public in 2020, but it sounds like that timeline, if it happens, has now been pushed back to 2021. Gett says it has met its “original financial targets that were set pre-COVID-19.” It also reached profitability in each of its core markets in June, and is on target now to be cash flow positive in 2021, ahead of a “potential” IPO.
“It’s a luxury, enabling flexibility for the company to go public when it’s best, rather than from the cash needs reasoning as many (money-losing) companies have to do nowadays,” Waiser said in an interview.
Gett is not disclosing the names of any of its investors in this round except to note that it’s a mix of new and existing backers, nor is it disclosing its valuation.
Waiser said the reason for that is that the round is still being expanded after getting oversubscribed, so it plans to announce a list of investors (and valuation?) after the expansion closes.
For some context, though, Gett has now raised $750 million, with investors including VW, Access and its founder Len Blavatnik, Kreos, MCI and more, and its last valuation was $1.5 billion, pegged to a $200 million fundraise in May 2019.
Gett started operations years ago serving both consumers and corporate users going head-to-head with the Ubers of the world for app-based, on-demand rides, but it had always differentiated its positioning by working with (in London) the “black cabs” and in NYC “yellow cabs” — that is, the established infrastructure of ride-hailing.
In recent years, it has honed its focus specifically on business accounts. No surprise, when you think about it, considering the capital intensiveness, competitiveness and subsequent poor unit economics of scaling a consumer-focused ridesharing business (a confluence of factors we’ve seen played out at Uber, Lyft, Grab and many others).
Gett’s turn to B2B has seen it pick up some 15,000 corporate customers, including one-third of the Fortune 500.
What has been interesting too is the approach Gett has taken to scale: Today, it provides rides in some 1,500 cities, but a large part of that footprint is served not directly by Gett. One of its key partners is Lyft — the result of a deal Gett inked with the company in November 2019 after Gett shut down its Juno operations in New York City. And it’s been expanding that list to include other third-party partnerships in the mix.
Partnerships may not yield margins as strong as those Gett has with direct operations. Gett still is the direct link between drivers and riders in its key markets, which include cities like London and Moscow. (It’s not disclosing what percentage of its business today is direct versus via third-party businesses.)
But on the other hand, Gett has been building its business by providing a plethora of analytics and invoicing services around the actual ride, and what it makes by securing corporate accounts on the back of that software becomes a revenue stream to offset the decline in margins from partnerships. Gett claims that its services ultimately undercut by about 25% other ground transportation options for corporates.
While a lot of consumers may have curtailed their Uber rides in recent months, the business market has seen a turn to ensuring that the travel that its users are taking is well-controlled when it has to be done, specifically to meet specific safety standards. That has been the sweet spot for Gett, with its very specific B2B approach.
“The completion of the fundraising during the pandemic is a clear expression of confidence by our shareholders and new investors in Gett’s vision to focus on the corporate market and its plan to expand globally, as well as in the Company’s strong operational and financial performance,” said Amos Genish, Gett chairman, in a statement.
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Autonomous vehicle startup AutoX lands driverless testing permit in California
AutoX, the autonomous vehicle startup backed by Alibaba, has been granted a permit in California to begin driverless testing on public roads in a limited area in San Jose.
The permit will allow AutoX to test its autonomous vehicles without a human safety driver behind the wheel. This is the third company to receive a driverless testing permit. Waymo and Nuro also have driverless testing permits. Unlike the other two companies, AutoX’s permit is limited to one vehicle and restricted to surface streets within a designated part of San Jose near is headquarters, according to the California Department of Motor Vehicles, which regulates AV testing in the state. The vehicle is approved to operate in fair weather conditions and light precipitation on streets with a speed limit of no more than 45 mph, the agency said.
AutoX, which is developing a full self-driving stack, has had a permit to test autonomous vehicles with safety drivers since 2017. Currently, 62 companies have an active permit to test autonomous vehicles with a safety driver on California roads.
To qualify for a driverless testing permit, companies have to show proof of insurance or a bond equal to $5 million, verify the vehicles are capable of operating without a driver, meet federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards or have an exemption from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
While AutoX has been operating robotaxi pilots in California and China, the company has said its real aim is to license its technology to companies that want to operate robotaxi fleets of their own. It has been particularly active in China, although this driverless permit hints that the company might be ramping up its activity in the U.S. as well.
AutoX opened an 80,000-square-foot Shanghai Robotaxi Operations Center in April, following a 2019 agreement with municipal authorities to deploy 100 autonomous vehicles in the Jiading District. The vehicles in the fleet were assembled at a factory about 93 miles outside of Shanghai.
The company has been operating a fleet of robotaxis in Shenzhen through a pilot program launched in 2019 with BYD. In January, AutoX partnered with Fiat Chrysler to roll out a fleet of robotaxis for China and other countries in Asia.
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Revel lands permit to bring hundreds of electric mopeds to San Francisco
Shared electric moped startup Revel received a permit that will allow it to operate in San Francisco, beginning in August.
The startup will start with a fleet of 432 mopeds featuring a new paint scheme and a more powerful engine to help riders get up and over the city’s infamously steep hills. For now, the service area will cover certain neighborhoods of San Francisco, including Cow Hollow, Dogpatch, the Financial District, Golden Gate Heights, Haight-Ashbury, the Mission District, Outer Mission, Pacific Heights, the Richmond District, the Tenderloin and the Castro. The service area will expand in the “near future,” Revel said.
Only licensed drivers with the Revel app can rent the mopeds. Each Revel can carry up to two riders, is limited to local streets and is capped at a speed of 30 miles per hour. Revel rides will cost $1 per person to start, followed by $0.39 per minute to ride.
Each Revel moped is equipped with two U.S. DOT-certified helmets that must be worn at all times. The company also provides third-party liability insurance automatically to all riders.
Revel, founded in March 2018 by Frank Reig and Paul Suhey, started with a pilot program in Brooklyn and later expanded to Queens. Revel has been on a fast-paced growth track, expanding to Austin, Miami and Washington, D.C in its first 18 months of operation. In January, the company launched in Oakland. The company also operates in sections of Manhattan, as well as south and central Bronx.
Revel is a bit different than some of the shared mobility startups out there. The company doesn’t rely on gig economy workers to charge its mopeds — a method used by e-scooter companies like Bird. Instead, Revel has full-time workers that maintain the mopeds and swap out the batteries as needed.
The company said it will begin hiring workers in San Francisco once it launches in August. Revel said it is participating in the First Source Hiring Program to find local employees.
The startup raised $27.6 million in capital last October in a Series A round led by Ibex Investors — funds required to fuel its expansion plans. The equity round included newcomer Toyota AI Ventures and further investments from Blue Collective, Launch Capital and Maniv Mobility.
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Uber acquires Routematch as it drives deeper into public transit in hunt for SaaS revenue
Uber said Thursday it has acquired Routematch, an Atlanta-based company that provides software to transit agencies as the ride-hailing company looks to offer more SaaS-related services to cities.
Uber did not share terms of the deal. However, it doesn’t appear to be a minor “acqui-hire,” in which a company is purchased to land a few talented employees. Instead, Uber is making a strategic acquisition for a company that has developed software used by more than 500 transit agencies.
The operations of the 170-person company will continue and CEO Pepper Harward will remain.
The acquisition marks Uber’s push to become a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider to public transit agencies. Routematch’s software provides trip planning, vehicle tracking, payment and tools for fixed route transit like buses as well as paratransit services. The 20-year-old company has a wide range of customers, including rural and suburban enclaves.
Last month, Uber locked in a deal to manage with a SaaS product an on-demand service for Marin County in the San Francisco Bay area. It was Uber’s first software partnership with a public transit agency.
Uber’s foray into SaaS has been years in the making, David Reich, head of Uber Transit, said in a recent interview.
“Uber knows that for cities to thrive, public transit has to thrive,” Reich said.
Uber has been developing services related to public transit since 2015, first with a planning feature and then ticketing, Reich noted. The public transit feature called Journey Planning is available in more than 15 cities around the world, including the Marin area since 2019. The company has also worked with Denver and Las Vegas. In 2018, Uber partnered with mobile ticketing platform Masabi to let people book and use transit tickets from within the Uber app.
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