[Funding alert] NextBillion.ai raises $21M in Series B round led by Mirae Asset Capital

Nextbillion AI, the Singapore-headquartered AI spatial data and mapping platform for enterprises, has raised $21 million in Series B round led by Mirae Asset Capital.

Existing investors Lightspeed, M12 (Microsoft's Venture Fund) and Alphawave also participated in the round, bringing the total funding to $34 million.

The SaaS startup confirmed that the fresh fund will be utilised to accelerate operations globally and expand into North America and Europe.

According to a statement shared by the company, the latest round of funding cements the company's position as one of the leaders in building and managing decentralised geospatial technology stacks for enterprises.

Founded in March 2020 by Gaurav Bubna, Ajay Bulusu, and Shaolin Zheng, NextBillion.ai empowers enterprises to build, scale, and manage their own spatial data ecosystems. The startup’s AI-powered APIs and SDKs help enterprises manage their spatial data at a petabyte scale.

It claims to have witnessed a 4x year-on-year growth in revenue and 10x growth in customer base. It aims to grow another 4x through 2022.

Currently, NextBillion.ai supports over 30 customers across 20+ countries and handles billions of API calls each month. Customers such as Gojek, Coca-Cola, Grassdoor, and Zuscoffee have turned to NextBillion.ai for the speed, accuracy, and cost effectiveness it offers relative to competitors such as Google Maps and Mapbox.

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Speaking about the new development, Ajay Bulusu, Co-founder of NextBillion.ai, stated,

“Given the current funding market environment, this round shows how strong the demand for our software is and how truly differentiated we are. We want to power everything that moves—pizza, people, or parcels. Everyone needs maps to move."

"Over the past year, we’ve grown rapidly and expanded our partner ecosystem to help realise our core vision of empowering businesses with all things location. We will use this funding to expand our global footprint and help our enterprise customers unlock value using spatial data," he added.

Commenting on its investment, Ashish Dave, CEO at Mirae Asset Venture Investments added,

“We are delighted to partner with NextBillion.ai as they redefine the enterprise mapping stack. Maps are critical for any location-centric enterprise, but existing solutions today are built for a singular use case, resulting in enterprises having to use a single map for their mission-critical business functions. NextBillion.ai’s decentralised mapping platform provides enterprises with the blocks to build, scale and manage their mapping infrastructure, giving rise to customized solutions that solve multiple use cases.

In Ajay, Gaurav, and Shaolin, we believe we are backing a team that has unparalleled experience and expertise in building 0 to 1 mapping platforms at scale. NextBillion.ai is creating a new category of mapping software, and we look forward to supporting them in this journey."