London-based Immense Simulations has built AI-powered simulation smart city software to make transport planning faster and safer.
The startup has just secured €4.1 million in Series A funding, which will support the continued development of its AI-driven ‘Simulation as a Service’ platform.
The Series A funding was co-led by Amadeus Capital Partners and Global Brain Corporation, one of the largest Japanese technology venture capital investment firms, with participation from 31 Ventures, part of the Mitsui Fudosan Group.
Founded in 2016, Immense’s platform uses simulation and AI to revolutionise how transport operators make decisions about the movement of people and goods by providing highly-detailed simulations of travellers, places and mobility systems that enable a rapid operational understanding of how a city moves. It also facilitates experimentation with service deployments when integrating new technologies and business models for transport systems.
These enhanced decision-making capabilities drive down costs and increase efficiencies for public authorities and mobility service providers. Simulation-based planning will help cities and autonomous vehicle operators manage the challenges of connected, shared, and electric transport.
“Mobility is changing fast but transport decision-making is slow and expensive, based on poor data,” said Robin North, Immense co-founder and CEO. “Cities need to accommodate growth, improve resilience and serve an ageing population while improving accessibility, air quality and energy consumption. Operators are facing increasingly low margins and both market and technology disruption, and consumers are expecting an ever more seamless service. This is a large-scale system problem that requires digital transformation to integrate siloed assets and empower effective decision-making.”
‘We’ve reached an inflexion point for transport technology, with machine learning and simulation software providing radical new opportunities for planners and providers,” said Amelia Armour, Principal at Amadeus Capital Partners. “Anyone who’s driven home after a bank holiday weekend – with over 15 million cars and 70,000 incidents on the road – can see the potential benefit of the Immense platform. By testing and simulating traffic, public agencies can plan and manage road use more effectively, allowing them to mitigate delays and reduce travel time.”
‘‘We have witnessed the concept of the ‘Smart City’ become more mature and see huge potential in Immense Simulations to disrupt the existing solutions on the market and transform how the industry works on simulation-related projects,” said Naoki Kamimaeda, Partner at Global Brain Corporation. “Smart transportation-related companies will definitely benefit from using Immense technologies and eventually it will make our society more efficient, comfortable and safe by reducing congestion and accidents and enhancing urban planning.”
