Revvo (formerly known as “IntelliTire”), a Silicon Valley-based startup that offers an internet of things (IoT) “smart” sensor for vehicle tires, announced it has raised $4M in Series A funding. Norwest Venture Partners led the round, with participation from Vulcan Capital and AngelList.
Although autonomous vehicle and self-driving technology have made enormous advances, the tire has remained virtually unchanged, despite being one of the most critical components of a vehicle’s performance, safety and reliability, according to Revvo.
The market offers a massive opportunity with more than $225 billion spent on 2.2 billion tires in the last year alone. Revvo’s initial focus will be on the fleet sector, a segment consuming tires at a disproportionately high rate with clear pain points around tire usage.
Revvo has built a first-of-its-kind, sensor-enabled AI software platform to monitor tires while a vehicle is on the road. The technology includes proprietary sensors that are embedded inside the tire, which generate a real-time feed of a tire’s condition and performance. The sensors capture thousands of data points per second from the interior of the tire. That data is sent to the cloud via an app on the driver’s phone. Artificial intelligence and machine learning models are applied to the aggregated data set to better predict tire tread wear. This helps the driver and fleet managers better understand the overall health of the tires on their vehicles, which leads to increased vehicle uptimes, optimized efficiency and improved safety, Revvo says.
“Until now, tires have not benefited from the mobility revolution. Through machine learning and AI, tires can provide an invaluable data set of road conditions, driver behavior and feedback for vehicle performance,” said Sunjay Dodani, Ph.D., Revvo’s CEO. “We’re extremely excited to have the support of the Norwest team, which will help us work toward our goal of enabling smart and connected tires. Our team at Revvo is passionate about applying a data science-centric approach to bring intelligence to the only part of the vehicle that touches the ground.”
“We live in a world of increasingly connected and autonomous vehicles, but tires haven’t changed in decades,” said Parker Barrile who is a partner at Norwest Venture Partners. “We’re excited to work with the team at Revvo to make tires as smart as the vehicles that depend on them and to tap into a massive market that is shifting toward fleets and autonomous vehicles.”
Revvo will use the financing to continue to build the product and expand its technical and business development teams.
