A Milton-Keynes-based ‘Simulation as a Service’ platform has secured $4.6m in funding.
Immense will use the funding to aid the growth and development of its AI-driven software for transportation modelling.
The funding was co-led by global technology investor Amadeus Capital Partners and Global Brain Corporation, one of the largest Japanese technology venture capital investment firms.
Further investment was made by 31 Ventures, part of the Mitsui Fudosan Group.
Founded in 2016 as a spin-out from the UK government’s Catapult programme, the platform uses simulation and AI to improve how transport stakeholders make decisions about the movement of people and goods.
It provides simulations of travellers, places and mobility systems and allows for experimentation with service deployments when integrating new tech and business models to a transport system.
“Anyone who’s driven home after a bank holiday weekend – with over 15 million cars and 70,000 incidents on the road – can see the potential benefit of the Immense platform.
“By testing and simulating traffic, public agencies can plan and manage road use more effectively, allowing them to mitigate delays and reduce travel time.”
Co-founder and CEO Robin North believes simulation-based planning will help cities and autonomous vehicle operators manage the challenges of connected, shared and electrified transport.
“Mobility is changing fast but transport decision-making is slow and expensive, based on poor data,” he said.
“This is a large-scale system problem that requires digital transformation to integrate siloed assets and empower effective decision-making.
“Immense is challenging these outdated methods through our cutting-edge, cloud-hosted simulation platform.”
Naoki Kamimaeda, oartner of Global Brain Corporation, added: ‘‘We have witnessed the concept of the ‘Smart City’ become more mature and see huge potential in Immense Simulations to disrupt the existing solutions on the market and transform how the industry works on simulation-related projects.
“Smart transportation-related companies will definitely benefit from using Immense technologies and eventually it will make our society more efficient, comfortable and safe by reducing congestion and accidents and enhancing urban planning.”