KIRKLAND, Wash. – October 29, 2007 – INRIX®, the leading provider of traffic flow information in the U.S., today announced a $15 million Series C round of funding led by existing investors August Capital, Bain Capital Ventures and Venrock. INRIX intends to utilize the funds to further accelerate deployment of its ground-breaking technology and international expansion to meet customer and market demand.
“With a strong book of business from more than 40 customers and the significant achievement of reaching our first cash-flow positive month in September, INRIX did not need to raise capital,” said Bryan Mistele, president and CEO of INRIX. “However, given the tremendous uptake of traffic services this past year and the rapidly changing nature of the LBS market, we decided that now is the time to accelerate several investments and further expand our product offerings to firmly cement INRIX’s leadership position in the market.”
INRIX has developed a unique technology portfolio that generates highly accurate real time, historical and predictive traffic information. With the broadest coverage on more roads and in more markets than any other U.S. traffic information provider, INRIX’s growth and success has been remarkable since the company was founded in 2004.
Tony Sun, managing general partner for Venrock commented, “INRIX is in a unique position with its technology, leadership, focus, and business model to be the market leader in what we expect to be a billion dollar traffic data business within five years.”
In the past year alone, INRIX has amassed nearly 30 new industry partners and customers, grown the maximum available coverage of real-time traffic flow information in the U.S. from 36 markets to 100, introduced real-time and predictive coverage for roadways throughout the entire U.K., and exponentially increased real time flow coverage from 8,000 miles to over 55,000.
Other traffic flow providers rely almost solely on traditional road sensors available on a severely limited number of highways and roads across the country to deliver real time traffic flow information. As a result, commuters in major metropolitan areas such as Miami, Cleveland and Kansas City previously had no access to real time traffic flow information. INRIX’s disruptive technology dramatically changed the traffic information industry with a ground-breaking approach of combining data from the largest network of GPS-enabled vehicles in the world with traffic-related information from more than 250 public and private sources, including traditional road sensors, toll tags, and other traffic data.
INRIX also leads the market in accuracy, an inherent problem for most traffic information providers, and its data has been extensively validated by customers, research firms (including two leading independent analysts), and strategic partners. One key partner, Clear Channel Total Traffic Network, conducts ongoing ground truth testing of INRIX traffic data using rigorous testing standards defined by BMW R&D.
The explosive demand for telematics and location-based services has raised the stakes in the competition for applications and services that will truly differentiate companies such as personal navigation device manufacturers, mobile services providers, automotive manufacturers, web portals, and others.
“The pending acquisitions of Tele Atlas by TomTom and NAVTEQ by NOKIA have dramatically changed the landscape of the navigation and location-based services markets, creating significant opportunities for INRIX,” said Ajay Agarwal, Managing Director at Bain Capital Ventures. “INRIX is now the only independent traffic flow aggregator in the U.S.”
As a result, INRIX has seen rapid use and adoption of its core traffic information services within the past 12 months by leading companies:
– TeleNav, the first company to launch a GPS navigation system on mobile phones in the U.S., launched traffic alerts with one-click rerouting in its TeleNav GPS Navigator application exclusively featuring INRIX data, and available through leading wireless carriers in the U.S., including Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile.
– Telmap, a market leading mobile navigation company, integrated INRIX real-time and predictive traffic speeds as well as incident solutions into its popular Telmap Navigator application.
– Clear Channel’s Total Traffic Network which has incorporated INRIX real time traffic for its automotive and portable navigation customers’ navigation applications including BMW, Garmin, TomTom, Mio/Mitac, NAVIGON, Cobra Electronics, Siemens VDO and others.
– Tele Atlas, a leading global provider of digital maps and dynamic content for navigation and location-based solutions, incorporated INRIX historical traffic information (Tele Atlas Historical Traffic Speeds) further extending its popular MultiNet and Dynamap offerings, and making average speeds available on specific road segments across the country.
– In the public sector, INRIX recently became the first private company to provide operational traffic data services, using GPS-based vehicle probes, to a government agency (Wisconsin DOT).
INRIX’s momentum in the automotive, Internet, media, mobile, portable navigation, public sector, and transportation & logistics space continues to catapult forward. Several other major customers have been signed and will be formally announced in the coming months.
About August Capital
Founded in 1995, August Capital is a leading venture capital firm actively investing in entrepreneurial teams throughout the information technology market spectrum.
About Bain Capital Ventures
Bain Capital Ventures is the Boston-based venture capital arm of Bain Capital. Founded in 1984, Bain Capital and its affiliates have invested in over 230 companies with such notable venture successes as DoubleClick, Shopping.com, and Staples. Bain Capital Ventures invests across all stages of a company’s growth from providing seed capital through offering late stage growth equity. Bain Capital Ventures and its early stage companies benefit from the broader resources of Bain Capital, including more than 400 investment professionals across North America, Europe, and Asia, over $40 billion of assets under management, and the knowledge gained from 20 years of successful venture investing. For more information, visit www.baincapitalventures.com.
About Venrock
Venrock is a premier venture capital firm with offices in Menlo Park, New York, Cambridge, MA, and Israel. Originally established as the venture capital arm of the Rockefeller family, Venrock continues a seven-decade tradition of partnering with entrepreneurs to establish successful, enduring companies. Having invested $1.9 billion in 400 companies resulting in over 120 IPOs over the past 38 years, Venrock’s investment returns place it among the top tier venture capital firms that have achieved consistently superior performance. With a primary focus on technology, healthcare, and energy, portfolio companies have included Apple Computer, Centocor, Check Point Software, DoubleClick, Gilead Sciences, Idec Pharmaceuticals, Illumina, Intel, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Sirna Therapeutics, and StrataCom.
About INRIX
INRIX® is the leading provider of accurate real time, historical and predictive traffic information nationwide, providing over 40 industry partners and customers including Tom Tom, Microsoft, TeleNav, Clear Channel Radio’s Total Traffic Network, deCarta, Tele Atlas, TCS, Telmap and others with the highest quality data and broadest coverage available for personal navigation, mapping, and other location-based service applications in the car, online and on mobile devices.
INRIX Traffic Services leverage sophisticated statistical analysis techniques, originally developed by Microsoft Research, to aggregate and enhance traffic-related information from hundreds of public and private sources, going well beyond the limitations of static road sensor networks, historical-based models and cellular data aggregators, to offer customers the most sophisticated understanding of the unique system-wide traffic patterns in each metropolitan area. Additionally, INRIX offers real-time for 100 markets and incident data for 122 markets across the country. To experience the traffic technology revolution behind the next generation of navigation and location-based service applications, visit www.inrix.com.
