Automotive Ventures is excited to share our latest investment out of the Mobility Fund: Citian.
Citian delivers innovative transportation technology to improve life through safe and accessible infrastructure.
The company provides the world's only Software as a Service (SaaS) tools that combine engineering expertise and artificial intelligence to furnish the real-time data and critical insights that infrastructure owners need in an interactive digital twin environment.
For example, Citian’s initial product set allows transportation planners to make data-driven decisions based on Citian’s proprietary analysis of crash data as well as ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliance and pedestrian accessibility shortfalls.
Exceptional Leadership
One of the key factors influencing our investment decision is the exceptional leadership team at Citian. The Citian team has extensive industry experience and deeply understands the pain points and intricate technical details of the industry.
The executive team brings a unique blend of industry expertise, innovative thinking, and a proven track record of successful past ventures. Their visionary approach to solving some of the biggest issues facing civil engineers stood out during our interactions.
Founder Steven Houh, P.E. was formerly the CEO of the largest Civil Engineering firm in D.C. and has 15+ years of experience in traffic engineering, roadway design, safety engineering, and asset management.
Chief Product and Strategy Officer Ryan Westrom, P.E., PTP has 20+ years of experience in engineering systems planning, design, and mobility data, and has prior experience with Ford Smart Mobility and the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Chief Technology Officer Jianwei Wang, Ph.D has 20+ years of experience in data science, software, and transportation engineering, and is an expert in federal and industry transportation guidelines.
Citian's development team of licensed Professional Engineers have decades of experience improving traffic safety through industry-leading data analysis and engineering design for complex urban transportation networks.
What Problem Is Citian Solving?
The U.S. $2.1T transportation infrastructure industry is long overdue for modernization. While we’re experiencing rapid technology development in autonomous vehicles, connectivity, and smart infrastructure, we’re at the same time suffering ‘brain drain’ due to the mass retirement of engineers, while compliance needs are growing. Systems are being taxed due to new generational infrastructure investments required across transportation and vehicle electrification.
Too often, infrastructure data is neglected due to constraints on budget, time, and the all-too-common information gap. As a result, infrastructure owners struggle to address their jurisdictions’ safety, equity, and maintenance needs. That means lives lost and less mobility for many infrastructure users, whether on the road, sidewalk, bike path, or other infrastructure asset.
The opportunity to digitize historical analog processes is paving the way for AI and big data solutions to be applied to some of these opportunities. Presently, civil engineers rely on a complex mix of calculation and reporting tools, leaving them struggling to meet their compliance and operational needs.
Strong Early Traction
Citian has exhibited impressive initial traction in terms of customer acquisition, user engagement, and revenue growth. They have a strong and growing pipeline of potential customers and have proven their ability to convert the pipeline into paid, recurring clients. This early validation underscores the market demand for their offering and validates our confidence in their ability to execute.
Market Potential
The market opportunity for Citian is significant and poised for dramatic growth. Our analysis identified that civil engineers need help, given the complexity and state of their current calculation and reporting tools. We are confident in the company's ability to further expand its market share.
Beyond its initial target market of municipalities and professional services firms that serve them, we see future opportunities to leverage Citian’s proprietary datasets to benefit other target markets, including insurance companies, automakers, and even the last-mile delivery ecosystem.
We believe Citian’s software platform is positioned to win.
The Citian Solution: A Deeper Look
The Citian AI platform automates tedious civil engineering tasks - saving time and money while improving quality.
Citian offers two products: ADAPT™ and CRASH™.
ADAPT™ (Accessibility Design, Assessment, and Planning Tool) is the world’s first comprehensive ADA compliance and pedestrian accessibility software – featuring insightful dashboards, custom instrumentation, automated compliance evaluation and transition planning assistance, and business intelligence tools.
ADAPT™ leverages artificial intelligence, advanced data analytics, and transportation engineering expertise to help clients meet their pedestrian, bicyclist, and micromobility infrastructure network goals. ADAPT™ unlocks achievement of full ADA compliance in your jurisdiction with real-time, accurate data, automatic prioritization, and cost estimates for asset upgrades and customizable business intelligence tools to meet all your query and reporting needs.
CRASH™ (Crash Reduction through Analysis of Safety Hazards) is the first of its kind: a comprehensive hub for traffic crash data, analysis, and reporting in a digital twin environment, leveraging artificial intelligence and advanced data analytics to meet traffic safety goals.
CRASH™ is cloud software leveraging machine learning, natural language processing, advanced data analytics, and decades of engineering know-how to help government clients meet traffic safety goals. CRASH™ has been fine-tuned to understand raw traffic crash report data and improve their quality and reliability using automated AI/ML algorithms. CRASH™ uses this foundation of quality crash data to produce instant analysis and data-driven decision support on safety policy at a network level as well as specific study locations.
Network Effects
As the company scales, it will benefit from network effects from its proprietary dataset: Citian’s tools add value to the data they collect, strengthening customer relationships with their proprietary locational intelligence data.
In addition, the company will build a Data-as-a-Service marketplace that will generate additional growth opportunities with new proprietary datasets to benefit other industries.
Alignment with Our Investment Thesis
The Citian investment aligns with the Automotive Ventures Mobility Fund thesis and our strategic focus areas. The thesis of the fund is to invest in the next wave of innovation in transportation technology. Citian is focused on solving a real, validated need at the intersection of AI, Analytics and Process Automation and has the potential to fundamentally improve how pedestrians and vehicles move within cities. Citian's mission, vision, and values resonate with those of the fund.
This investment is positioned to take dominant market share, has strong potential for eventual exit, and to drive outsized returns for our investors.
We’re thrilled to be part of Citian's journey and are confident that our investment and contribution to the company will not only yield significant returns but also contribute to the company's emergence as the leader in the broader mobility industry. We look forward to collaborating closely with the Citian team and playing a proactive role along their path to success.
