The Rise of Inrix

By Anthony J. Bauer, Head of Private Equity at Hennessy and Associates

Inrix, co-founded by a former Microsoft and Ford executive, could be the new player in transportation as it has data from 500 million vehicles, and has now partnered with GM on a cloud-based software effort to reduce crashes, road fatalities and carbon emissions. The company has aggressively grown its business among the public sector as cities transform mobility, and infrastructure funding reached into the billions. It is now evaluating the right time for an IPO.

Transportation has played a big part in the disruption sector, with companies like Waze becoming crucial to the driving public as they seek to avoid speed cameras and look for the nearest coffee shop, Uber, which has undeniably changed the public’s and society’s basic ideas about urban mobility, and SpaceX, which is seeking to completely change long-term distance travel.

But now Inrix, which may be less well-known to the public, is becoming key to the future of transportation. The company is now almost two decades old and still remains under the radar, but its reach when it comes to understanding the complexities and challenges in transportation is growing. Rather than relying on helicopters to monitor traffic, Inrix is able to collect aggregated, anonymous data from 500 million vehicles, mobile devices, mobile apps, parking lot operators, mobile carriers and smart meters, all in real-time, covering both consumer and fleet vehicles, before then feeding all that information into a system which is being utilised more and more by public agencies and transportation planners rethinking urban mobility.

Watch this space as the company begins to make a name for itself.