rideOS Raises $25 Million Led by Next47 to Support the Rollout of Self-Driving Cars

author: Eric Walz   

In the near future, human drivers might share the road with self-driving cars, with all of the vehicles co-mingled and looking for the best route. What's missing is a dedicated platform to manage all of this traffic that is generated by competing platforms.

This is the goal of rideOS, a 11-month-old San Francisco-based startup that recently came out of stealth mode and is working to solve logistics problems for autonomous fleets, ride-hailing platforms, as well as for human drivers.

The company announced $25 million in new funding to accelerate its mapping operations in Europe. The latest round was led by Next47, a Siemens-backed global venture firm. Next47 will join the rideOS board and will be integral in guiding rideOS in European transportation markets. The new funding brings rideOS' total funding to $34 million.

The rideOS, platform is designed to accelerate the safe roll-out of next-generation transportation fleets by creating a global collaborative framework for a next generation ‘traffic control system' for self-driving vehicles.

The rideOS platform at its core is a dynamic mapping service. The company's technology figures out the best way to get from point A to point B, whether for human drivers or self-driving cars, fleet operators or ride-hailing companies. The platform provides each vehicle with the best route in real-time, based on current conditions.

Powering this service is the company's scalable and flexible routing engine the company calls rideROUTE. The platform includes self-driving vehicle routing, estimated time of arrival (ETA) calculations, dispatch, supply positioning, multi-rider trip planning, and dashboards for monitoring key metrics. These ETAs are used by rideMARKET and ridePLAN—the company's trip-planning and dispatch engines—that efficiently matches riders with vehicles.

The company's cloud-based routing engine can be customized given the technology capabilities of self driving vehicles, to find efficient, self-driving friendly routes. If no suitable autonomous routes are available, RideOS system can help its customers dispatch a human driver on the most efficient and safe route for humans.

"rideOS represents an essential part of the next-generation mobility stack, connecting the software, hardware, and infrastructure that are necessary to deploy self-driving technology at scale," said Lak Ananth, CEO and Managing Partner at Next47. "Digital tools and resources like rideOS' mobility platform will help transform the transportation landscape in cities across the globe, ushering in a new era of sustainability and efficiency. We believe our investment in rideOS, and the power of Siemens behind us, will help accelerate progress towards this goal."

The Series B round follows two key partnership announcements with Autonomic, a Ford Motor Company subsidiary that connects vehicles to the cloud, and Singapore's ST Engineering (ST Engg). rideOS and ST Engg have partnered to expedite the safe rollout of autonomous mobility systems in Singapore. rideOS is helping Autonomic accelerate Ford's plan to launch a robo taxi service by 2021.

"The past 12 months have been a whirlwind of signing partnerships, funding rounds, and reaching our internal milestones, and we couldn't be happier to have Next47 join us as we embark on this next phase of rideOS," said rideOS CEO and co-founder, Justin Ho. "Cities with next-generation transportation are undergoing the biggest paradigm shift since the transition from horse and buggy to automobile. We want to work with governments, OEMs, transportation network companies, and technology companies to prepare them for a driverless future."

The collaboration with Next47 will be able to provide rideOS with global support and deep expertise in industrial and infrastructure technology to help rideOS complete its self-driving car stack.

Eric Walz

Originally hailing from New Jersey, Eric is a automotive & technology reporter covering the high-tech industry here in Silicon Valley. He has over 15 years of automotive experience and a bachelors degree in computer science. These skills, combined with technical writing and news reporting, allows him to fully understand and identify new and innovative technologies in the auto industry and beyond. He has worked at Uber on self-driving cars and as a technical writer, helping people to understand and work with technology.