Optibus offers a scalable SaaS platform for transportation planning and operations, focused on optimization for public transit. The company is led by CEO and co-founder Amos Haggiag and is based in Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel. Its solution is in use in 1,000 cities across 26 countries in North and South America, EMEA, and Asia Pacific. Optibus received an investment from Volvo Group Venture Capital AB; the amount was not disclosed. The investment is intended to accelerate digitalization and electrification of the global public transportation sector. Optibus and Volvo Group will collaborate to create mutual strategic learnings and growth opportunities. Optibus provides AI-based planning tools and operations software for public transportation bodies and their mass-transit partners. The company is expanding beyond planning into analytics (Ridership Insights) and an end-to-end operations stack for people management and real-time driver services, slated to launch in June. It incorporates data about public bike, scooter and taxi access points (but not their movements) and has been acquiring complementary startups, including Portland-based Trillium for around $10 million. Optibus says it now has customers in more than 1,000 cities, powers and tracks about 2.5 billion trips annually, and has grown its headcount to 300 employees. CEO Amos Haggiag said the new funding will be used to continue expanding the product set and wider business footprint. Optibus offers an AI-driven platform that analyzes how vehicles and people move in cities and provides navigation, scheduling, driver rostering and other operational guidance to mass-transport operators. The company recently launched a Geospatial Suite to visualize and predict multimodal movement across buses, trains, bikes, scooters and walking. Customers include city governments, large transit operators, big campuses, tech companies running private shuttles, and vehicle makers; the company reports "zero churn" in its customer base. In London it helps run about 30% of the city's public transportation (mainly buses) and roughly 25% of public transportation across the U.K. During the pandemic Optibus saw a surge of new business and increased usage from customers even as some cities saw passenger revenues fall by as much as 80%. Founded in 2014 and based in Tel Aviv, Optibus plans to use product and service expansion to address growing multimodal and data-driven transit needs. Optibus develops software to modernize mass transit systems and prepare them for smart-city integration. Its technology is deployed in more than 300 cities to improve quality of service, reduce costs, streamline operations and cut congestion and emissions. Since its previous funding of $12 million in 2017, the company says its sales have grown by 400 percent. Optibus has expanded its presence in North America and Europe following that prior round. The company received a $40 million private funding injection in the round reported here. No other financial details or valuation were disclosed in the article. Optibus builds an operating system for public transport, used for real-time scheduling and predicting necessary adjustments to services run by transit operators and municipalities. The platform is marketed for smart cities and for improving operations and customer experience across bus, train and tram networks. Operators in 200 cities, including Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Washington DC, currently use Optibus. The company intends to invest its new funding to further develop the operating system for smart-city applications. Management highlighted the risk that classic forms of transport may be left behind amid automotive disruption, positioning Optibus as a solution to modernize transit operations. The company recently appointed Ehud Rokach as executive chairman.

Total raised

$259M

Funding rounds

5

Latest round

Series D

Latest activity

May 2022