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As Much of AV Pumps Brakes, May Mobility Attracts Capital and Expertise to Deploy More Last-Mile Transportation Solutions
ANN ARBOR, Mich.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May Mobility, the only enterprise autonomous transportation company providing daily transit to the American public, today announced that Millennium New Horizons and Cyrus Capital Partners have joined its investor-base, co-leading a $22M Series A round, with LG Technology Ventures and Thayer Ventures participating alongside return investors BMW i Ventures, Maven Ventures, Toyota AI Ventures, and Y Combinator. The round will help them expand their engineering and operations in order to meet growing demand.
“We - today - provide mobility services that are reliable and safe, on public roads, with a tech stack designed to operate now and ready to scale as the industry and customers are ready," said Edwin Olson, CEO of May Mobility. "Our unique technology solves customers' real-world transportation problems, and we are continuously collecting valuable technical data and market insights while generating revenue in the process. May Mobility is uniquely positioned as the only autonomous vehicle company that's truly open for business."
May Mobility’s deployment in complex downtown environments is made possible by its unique solution, made up of three pillars and the ability for each to learn from the other in the real-world environment:
- Full-Stack Technology: Currently optimized for fleets of low-speed vehicles and ready to scale when customers demand, May Mobility’s hardware and software stack is distinct in its ability to “think” on the road, navigating among other cars, bikes, pedestrians and the rest of what cars encounter on public roads. With each mile driven and each street configuration encountered, the technology grows smarter.
- Expert Fleet Operations: A true transportation solution extends well-beyond the vehicle in which people ride. It takes into account the needs of the transit agencies or developers and the riders they serve, along with traffic patterns, route layouts and more to design dependable, safe and enjoyable solutions. May’s operations team does all of this and layers in professional oversight and management, delivering the confidence that fleets are safe and ready to ride.
- Business Insights: A cloud-based data platform gives customers complete visibility into the health of its fleet, running analytics on ridership and trends, monitoring vehicle health, and tracking individual vehicles. These insights are essential for business viability but also help provide the metrics and assurances required to operate on public roads.
Currently, May Mobility focuses on the $28B US last-mile transportation market — short trips in urban cores. Its commercial services currently navigate the streets of downtown Detroit, MI and Columbus, OH. These routes are in high-density areas, filling a critical need for customers and riders, but challenging for traditional autonomous vehicles. In the coming months, May Mobility will be launching public services in Grand Rapids, MI and Providence, RI with plans to announce additional commercial deployments in cities across the U.S. in 2019. With each new launch, the company expands its technical expertise and service knowledge by meeting a different set of mobility needs. The team already works with private and public customers, elevating tourism, simplifying the morning commute, or connecting transportation lines between otherwise isolated communities.
“Millennium has spent the past few years researching the mobility market and May Mobility stands out to be the only company that has delivered a real-world here-and-now transportation solution in a technologically feasible and economically viable manner,” said Ray Cheng, Partner at Millennium. “Today, May is servicing rides at a cost-per-mile unmatched by any others in the industry. We are excited to partner with May and help the company grow to become an integral part of the future of transportation.”
“Simply put, we believe that the future of urban transportation is shared, electric, and autonomous,” said Benjamin Birnbaum, Co-Founder of Repower Group, a Cyrus Capital affiliate, which is co-leading the current financing round. "May Mobility has a uniquely talented team, a scalable operating model, and is already solving mission critical challenges for its customer base that meet this vision. Repower Group specializes in helping companies grow in asset intensive segments. We’re excited to be a partner to May as they navigate the next stage of their growth.” Birnbaum added: “We believe that May Mobility’s impact on accessibility, quality, and cost of urban transportation will be transformative for the way that people move around cities.”
“Communities throughout the U.S. are struggling to provide convenient and reliable transportation services, and our model is already being deployed to solve real parking, traffic, and land management issues for municipalities, developers, and business customers,” said Alisyn Malek, COO of May Mobility. “This new round of funding will help us expand existing routes and allow us to serve new partners as we accelerate our growth this year.”
- Originally published at www.businesswire.com