URBAN-X by MINI and Urban Us Graduates Fourth Cohort, Alumni Startups Hit New Funding Milestones

URBAN-X graduated its fourth cohort of startup companies, hosting an event for seven startups to showcase new hardware, software and IoT platforms to potential investors, customers and public-sector leaders.

The startups in the URBAN-X Cohort 04 are working on solutions to some of the biggest problems cities face around the world, such as optimizing building construction, making residential real estate rentals more transparent, improving personal mobility and road safety, fast, cheap road tolls, and cutting energy waste in commercial office buildings. The Demo Day event kicked off a series of investor meetings the startups will have with top venture capitalists in New York, San Francisco and Palo Alto.

Leading venture investors, public officials, entrepreneurs, and corporate leaders interacted with everyday citizens of New York, listening to presentations and participating in live demonstrations from each of the startups who showcased their market-ready prototypes to an in-person audience of more than 250 and thousands online through a livestream in partnership with Futurism.

“We’re thrilled to work with these innovative entrepreneurs who are pushing the boundaries of what technology can do for our cities,” said Head of MINI Brand Strategy and Business Innovation Esther Bahne. “The MINI brand’s  investment in URBAN-X provides a platform to collaborate with some of the brightest minds and creative urban thinkers around the world, who are helping to shape the future of our cities.”

Today’s event was an opportunity for Cohort 04 startups not only to demonstrate the product developments made during URBAN-X’s 20-week accelerator program, but also to seek additional investment to grow their companies.

“Cohort 04 is a group of incredibly creative, inventive and driven entrepreneurs,” said URBAN-X Managing Director, Micah Kotch. “Improving the way our cities work has always required new thinking, and we’re excited about what comes next for these teams.”

URBAN-X has a proven track record in helping early-stage companies secure funding from leading investors. Six of the seven companies in the URBAN-X Cohort 03 are raising their next round of capital. One of those startups, Lunewave, which develops high-performance sensors for fully autonomous vehicles, recently announced a $5 million investment from a group that includes BMW iVentures. This represents the first URBAN-X startup to work with the BMW Startup Garage program and receive investment from the German automaker’s venture capital arm. 

Blueprint Power, another Cohort 03 company, which helps large real estate companies transform their urban portfolios into producers of clean, intelligent suppliers of electricity recently closed their $3.5 million Series-A financing. Cohort 04 startup Rentlogic, which provides a residential real estate rating system, recently closed a $2.4 million round of seed capital.

“Cohort 04 has already been a great success and today was an exciting milestone for each of these companies,” said Mark Paris, co-founder of Urban Us. “We look forward to continue our work with these entrepreneurs, to help them bring their products to market at scale and positively impact city life.”

In the coming weeks, the Cohort 04 startups will meet with potential investors in New York and California. In addition to investments that URBAN-X and Urban Us made as part of the accelerator program, funds and individuals that have invested in URBAN-X portfolio companies include Fred Wilson, Brad Burnham, Edgar Bronfman Jr., BMW iVentures, Draper Associates, Fontinalis Partners, Ekistic Ventures, Wireframe Ventures, Fifth Wall Ventures, Samsung NEXT, Story Ventures, Kairos, and UL Ventures.

The full list of Cohort 04 companies include:

• Avvir -- Avvir automates quality assurance for the construction industry, providing real-time insights into the progress and potential defects on a project.
• Campsyte -- Campsyte enables citydwellers to easily find and book private outdoor event space.
• ClearRoad -- ClearRoad helps government agencies automate toll road pricing for any section of road without the need for traditional proprietary hardware infrastructure.
• Open Data Nation -- Open Data Nation analyzes billions of public data records for cities and insurance carriers to predict and proactively mitigate problems, such as car crashes as part of the Vision Zero Initiative and prepare for the safe deployment of new technologies such as autonomous vehicles.
• Park & Diamond -- Park & Diamond makes biking better by reinventing the bike helmet, using next-generation materials to build a safer, more portable helmet that can roll up into the shape of a water bottle for easier carrying, while looking like a regular hat, cap or beanie.
• Rentlogic -- Rentlogic is a data-driven, letter-grade rating system for apartment buildings that aims to bring transparency and standardization to the residential real estate market.
• Sapient Industries -- Sapient Industries has developed a smart outlet that senses and learns human behavior patterns in order to automate a building’s energy management.