Superpedestrian raises $125 million to scale pedestrian protection technology
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Our largest-ever funding round will help Superpedestrian introduce our revolutionary Pedestrian Defense system this year to cities across North America and Europe.
By: Ross Ringham
Read more: Boston Globe, TechCrunch, The Telegraph, Silicon Republic, Webrazzi
More than a decade ago, Assaf Biderman had a vision — to create the world’s safest, smartest micro-electric vehicles. Superpedestrian was spun out of MIT in 2013 to make his dream a reality. Today, we’ve taken a giant leap forward.
“Over the past nine years, we have developed a unique software platform that addresses the core challenges of electric vehicle fleets,” says Assaf, founder and CEO of Superpedestrian.
Many of our patented technologies are well-documented. Among them is Vehicle Intelligence, our “onboard mechanic” that runs 1,000 vehicle health checks every second and autonomously adjusts vehicle performance to prevent component failures. We first revealed VI in 2013, and we’ve been improving it ever since.
We designed and built the LINK shared e-scooter around the brain that VI provided, taking two years to get it right. For LINK, we created the first onboard city map storage and geofence enforcement to improve consistency and speed of reaction. Our system allows us to store commands for no-go, go-slow and parking zones onboard every e-scooter, cutting reaction times from an industry average of 30s to just 0.7s.
These technologies are proven at scale, with our scooters operating safely in 57 cities in 10 countries.
But our mission to improve the safety, sustainability and efficiency of micro-electric vehicles is not over. Last summer we announced Pedestrian Defense, which solves the hurdle presented by the inherent inaccuracy of standard GPS. By combining hyper-accurate positioning with AI, we can understand exactly where a vehicle is and how it’s moving. Pedestrian Defense will allow us to counter a wide array of poor rider behavior, including — for the first time — ending sidewalk riding in real-time.
We have been testing Pedestrian Defense for the past few months and we are now ready to introduce the system to the world stage. We’re very pleased that our investors see the value of this work and have stepped up to help in the roll-out. The Sony Innovation Fund, Jefferies, Antara Capital and FM Capital have joined us, alongside existing backers such as Spark Capital, General Catalyst and Citi Ventures.
“From predictive-maintenance and repair automation, to fine-grain locationing and curb management, our platform is rich with advanced capabilities that enable safer and more reliable transportation solutions,” Assaf goes on. “With this latest funding round, we are boosting our investment in R&D and scaling up our deployments in micromobility and beyond.”
