Smart City Company Miovision Secures CAD$120 Million

By Dan Anderson • Jan 30, 2020
  • Miovision, a company using computer vision, AI, and advanced modeling to help cities modernize, announced it raised $120 CAD million

Miovision — a Canadian company using computer vision, AI, and advanced modeling to help cities modernize their approach to traffic management — announced it has raised a $120 CAD million minority funding round led by TELUS Ventures. And this round of funding will help Miovision become the platform that cities across the globe will use for measuring, managing, and optimizing traffic congestion and safety.

The TELUS Ventures investment was supported by a syndicate of investors led by McRock Capital. And it also includes both new investors and existing investors who chose to increase their support for the company.

The 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. And the company aims to hire more than 100 new employees in 2020 thus increasing its Canadian workforce by 50%.

“This funding round will help Miovision realize its goal of becoming the platform by which cities everywhere measure, manage and optimize traffic,” said Miovision 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.”

TELUS will also become the preferred wireless provider for Miovision worldwide. And by leveraging TELUS’ dedicated IoT network (purpose-built for IoT connected devices), Miovision-equipped traffic signals will allow cities to remotely access, analyze, and action data generated at intersections.

“TELUS is 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,” added Rich Osborn, Managing Partner at TELUS Ventures. “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.”

As part of the investment, TELUS will hold two positions on Miovision’s Board of Directors and join existing board members, including McRock’s Whitney Rockley, and early investors MacKinnon, Bennett & Co’s Ken MacKinnon and former BlackBerry Vice President of Strategic Alliances Chris Wormald.

Established in 2005, Miovision brings to market a portable product that accurately gathers and analyzes traffic data. And in 2017, Miovision launched a smart traffic platform allowing cities to modernize their existing analog traffic signals by adding connectivity and video-based and multimodal traffic measurement and analysis. Plus Miovision’s suite of products and services help cities to better understand, manage, and optimize traffic along with reducing congestion and emissions while improving traffic safety.

As urban areas grow, the pressing need to better manage traffic helped Miovision achieve a revenue CAGR of 37.4% over the last 10 years. And its products have processed over 23 million hours of traffic video, counting more than 9 billion vehicles in the process.