AI powered simulation software makes transport planning faster and safer; already deployed with driverless vehicle operators and public authorities
London, 00.00 21 May 2019 – Immense Simulations, the intelligent mobility software provider, today announced that it has secured $4.6m in Series A funding. The investment will aid the continued growth and development of its AI-driven ‘Simulation as a Service’ platform, which is disrupting traditional transportation modelling.
The Series A funding was co-led by global technology investor, Amadeus Capital Partners, one of Europe’s most active AI investors according to Pitchbook, and Global Brain Corporation, one of the largest Japanese technology venture capital investment firms. Further investment was made by 31 Ventures, part of the Mitsui Fudosan Group.
Led by an award-winning team, Immense was founded in 2016 as a spin-out from the UK government’s Catapult programme. The platform uses simulation and AI to revolutionise how transport stakeholders make decisions about the movement of people and goods. Immense provides highly-detailed, agent-based simulations of travellers, places and mobility systems that enable rapid operational understanding of how a city moves. It facilitates experimentation with service deployments when integrating new technology and business models to a transport system.
These enhanced decision-making capabilities, strategically and operationally, 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 electrified transport. Immense has proven the transferability of these methods with early clients in the UK, EU and in North America.
Robin North, Immense Co-Founder and CEO, said, “Mobility is changing fast but transport decision-making is slow and expensive, based on poor data. 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.
“Immense is challenging these outdated methods through our cutting-edge, cloud-hosted simulation platform. With the backing of investors such as Amadeus with expertise in the mobility software sector, and the international perspective of Global Brain, we can capture the growing market for intelligent transport solutions.”
Amelia Armour, Principal, Amadeus Capital Partners, said, ‘We’ve reached an inflexion point for transport technology, with machine learning and simulation software providing radical new opportunities for planners and providers. 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.”
Naoki Kamimaeda, Partner, of Global Brain Corporation, said ‘‘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. 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”
ENDS
You can find out more about Immense at www.immense.ai and follow us on Twitter @Immense_AI.
About Amadeus Capital Partners
Amadeus Capital Partners is a global technology investor. Since 1997, the firm has raised over $1bn for investment and used it to back more than 130 companies. With vast experience and a great network, Amadeus’ team of investors and entrepreneurs share a passion for the transformative power of technology. We invest in consumer services, financial technology, artificial intelligence, cyber security, medical technology, digital healthcare and digital media. Early stage investments we’ve made include rare disease treatment discovery platform Healx, massively parallel simulation platform Improbable; Graphcore, innovators in intelligent microprocessors, and speech recognition company VocalIQ (acquired by Apple). To learn more visit https://amadeuscapital.com and follow us on Twitter @AmadeusCapital.
About Global Brain Corporation
To contribute to stimulate the Japanese economy, Global Brain supports startups that tackle a range of problems and create innovation. Our professionals with high achievement and extensive experience discover excellent startups through our multiple global locations and provide growth support through hands-on. The total asset under management is more than US$1 billion, becoming the largest domestic independent venture capital firm. To learn more visit https://globalbrains.com/.
