Another Seattle area company that’s building some of the underlying technologies for the “connected car” has scored a new round of cash. Airbiquity, whose customers include OnStar, BMW and Ford, just landed $4 million in fresh capital from existing investors, including Acorn Ventures, Ignition Partners, Kirnaf Ltd, Shell Internet Ventures.
Total funding in the company — which employs 100 people and plans to grow headcount by 20 percent this year — now stands at close to $80 million.
Leo McCloskey, vice president of marketing at Airbiquity, tells GeekWire that the company’s prospects for “connected vehicle services” is growing at a very fast pace.
“We have multiple unannounced contracts with automakers and suppliers for our services,” he said. “Such contracts are well ahead of our business plan, so we have increased our capital base to accelerate our growth to meet contracted demand.”
As we’ve reported in the past (and have been somewhat befuddled by), there’s a bit of a cottage industry in the Seattle area around providing new technologies to automobiles. Just last week, Inrix — the provider of traffic data to navigation systems — announced a whopping $37 million venture round and then a few days later made a $60 million bid for its European rival. And The Cobalt Group, purchased last year by ADP for $400 million, provides digital marketing services to automobile manufacturers and dealers.
Airbiquity is led by Kamyar Moinzadeh, a longtime veteran of the company who previously worked at Netro Corporation, AT&T Wireless Services and Motorola.
Previously on GeekWire: Airbiquity on board with OnStar’s retail mirror
