Waze provides free apps for iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 7, BlackBerry and other mobile platforms that deliver turn-by-turn navigation while building maps from user data. The apps rely on crowdsourced inputs — driver-created maps, citizen traffic reports and community-curated points of interest — producing high-frequency reports (a traffic jam every 4.2 seconds and an accident every 44 seconds, on average). Earlier this summer Waze released a new iPhone and Android version with text-to-speech voice guidance using Nuance, enabling voice alerts and spoken street, exit and highway names. Since that release Waze added 2 million users, bringing its total to over 7 million active drivers. The company is targeting international expansion, particularly in Asia, with imminent plans to expand to China and Korea and existing usage in the U.S., Israel, Italy, Ecuador and France and accelerated growth in Spain, Malaysia, Mexico and Brazil. Waze faces competition from Google on Android navigation but differentiates by supporting multiple platforms and through partnerships, including one with ABC. Waze is a mobile application that uses real-time, user-sourced GPS speed and incident reports to calculate optimum driving routes. As drivers use the app their GPS data and reports (accidents, construction) update traffic conditions for others, and the company uses that data to build user-editable maps, described as a Wikipedia of maps. The service was already a hit in Israel, with more than 80,000 users providing data on 90 percent of the country’s roads, and is beginning a private alpha test in the San Francisco Bay Area. In the U.S. the company is initially targeting a specific area and Android devices, with plans to expand to other cities including Chicago and Boston and to other platforms such as Windows Mobile phones and iPhones. Waze plans to monetize by selling anonymized traffic data to companies, enabling it to offer the application for free. The company has raised a first funding round of undisclosed size from Blue Run Ventures, Magma Ventures, and Vertex Venture Capital.

Total raised

$30M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Equity

Latest activity

Oct 2011