From unintelligible public transit maps to scarce street parking, traveling in metro areas can be a hassle. So that the logistics of transportation don’t put a damper on the glitz and glamor of the big city, Metropolis Technologies designed a solution to lessen the hassle of paid parking.
The company announced Wednesday a fresh round of venture capital for its mobility commerce platform. Metropolis secured a $167 million Series B funding round co-led by 3L Capital and Assembly Ventures. This round brings its total funding raised to $226 million.
Metropolis’ computer vision and machine learning-powered tech allows users to enter and exit parking lots and garages with seamless pay. The company partners with restaurants, coffee shops, retail stores and other merchants and operates more than 600 parking lots. When a member registers on Metropolis’ mobile app, they provide their name, license plate, phone number and payment method. This way, after visiting a business, the app gives them the details of their visit — including time and parking rate — and charges them when they leave the business’ site.
“You drive in, you go about your business, you drive out,” Alex Israel, CEO and co-founder of Metropolis, told Built In via email. “Our computer vision system recognizes a returning Metropolis member, enabling them to go about their journey without stopping to fumble with tickets or credit cards. It’s [a] single sign-on for the built environment.”
Since the time of its Series A in February of 2021, Metropolis has seen 28x user growth, and is now operational in more than 60 cities. To date, more than 1.8 million members use its platform that works to connect transportation, payments and neighborhood commerce together for the first time, according to the company.
“Parking and movement within urban environments have not changed in the past 70 years and we set out to change that,” Israel said. “We intend to build real world infrastructure that could replicate and deliver the same frictionless experience we have with e-commerce — something to minimize our stop and maximize our go.”
Now that it’s outfitted with a fresh injection of capital, Metropolis plans to invest in several areas. First up is building the future generations of its computer vision platform and deploying that tech into new mobility-adjacent verticals, according to Israel. In addition to this, the company is fueling expansion through acquisitions during a prime time for growth.
“We’ve always seen a future where brick-and-mortar locations were brought online. However, this is particularly important now as we recover from Covid and people return to their jobs and start traveling again,” Israel said. “Commercial real estate operators adapting to this return to normal life can leverage Metropolis to gain understanding into how their assets are being utilized by consumers. … And people are used to this sort of experience online. It’s increasingly weird that buying socks on the internet takes way less effort than pulling up to the coffee shop to pop in and pop out with a latte.”
Metropolis is putting a portion of its new capital toward building out its internal team, and it’s actively hiring across more than 200 roles, Israel said. With a current headcount of around 2,000, the company aims to have 2,500 employees by the end of this year.
