NextNav has developed a Metropolitan Beacon System (MBS) that uses cellular signals—deployed on cellular towers—to provide device positioning including the vertical "Z" dimension. The MBS can determine a device's floor level within less than three meters and serves smartphones, drones, IoT devices, and autonomous vehicles in indoor and urban areas where GPS is intermittent. The company is targeting emergency-response use cases tied to new FCC 911 vertical-location requirements and emphasizes the ability to identify how many people are on a particular floor. Its network is already live in the Bay Area and Washington, D.C., and NASA plans to use NextNav’s MBS at its Langley Research Center for autonomous navigation testing. NextNav, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., plans to use the new funding to expand its network to the 50 biggest U.S. markets. The company raised $120 million in a mix of equity and debt to support commercial deployment and network expansion; the round was led by funds managed by affiliates of Fortress Investment Group with participation from Columbia Capital, Future Fund, Telcom Ventures, funds managed by Goldman Sachs Asset Management, NEA, and Oak Investment Partners. NextNav LLC, based in Sunnyvale, CA and McLean, VA, provides location services for indoor and urban environments through its Metropolitan Beacon System (MBS). Led by CEO Gary Parsons, the company’s MBS delivers horizontal and vertical location services inside buildings and in urban areas where satellite-based GPS signals aren’t available or reliable. NextNav is deploying its MBS network similarly to a cellular network, creating wide-area coverage intended to reach every building within its network presence. The company says the funds from its latest financing will be used to extend commercialization of the MBS positioning network. NextNav closed a $70M Series D financing led by New Enterprise Associates and Oak Investment Partners, with participation from Columbia Capital, Telcom Ventures and Goldman Sachs Investment Partners. As part of the round, Peter Barris (NEA) and Bandel Carano (Oak) will join NextNav’s board of directors.

Total raised

$190M

Funding rounds

3

Latest round

Equity

Latest activity

Jan 2020