Urban Engines was a data analytics

startup A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend t ...

based in

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...

. It was acquired by Google in September 2016. It used

data In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete values that convey information, describing quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted ...

to give insight into cities and how people move around in them. Founder and

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

Shiva Shivakumar says the company is mapping the "Internet of Moving Things," as quoted by the

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

, which is a new way of mapping objects in motion. The company's goal is to improve mobility in cities. Urban Engines has developed a new type of

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases sp ...

, which maps objects in motion, called a "Space/Time Engine", and currently has deals with cities like,

Washington D.C ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, Na ...

São Paulo São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for 'Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian state, located in the country's Southeast Region. Listed by the GaWC a ...

and

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

as well as delivery and

logistics Logistics is generally the detailed organization and implementation of a complex operation. In a general business sense, logistics manages the flow of goods between the point of origin and the point of consumption to meet the requirements of ...

companies. The company also released a commuter app with "mixed-mode routing," which evaluates different modes of

transport Transport (in British English), or transportation (in American English), is the intentional movement of humans, animals, and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, land (rail and road), water, cable, pipeline, an ...

ation – walking, driving,

public transit Public transport (also known as public transportation, public transit, mass transit, or simply transit) is a system of transport for passengers by group travel systems available for use by the general public unlike private transport, typical ...

, and

Uber Uber Technologies, Inc. (Uber), based in San Francisco, provides mobility as a service, ride-hailing (allowing users to book a car and driver to transport them in a way similar to a taxi), food delivery (Uber Eats and Postmates), package ...

– to give users the quickest routes. The app is built on Urban Engines own proprietary mapping system.

History and funding

The company was founded by Shiva Shivakumar and Balaji Prabhakar. Shiva was previously VP of Engineering and a Distinguished Entrepreneur at

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

(2001-2010), who helped build AdSense, Search Appliances and Cloud Apps, and Balaji is a

Stanford Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is considere ...

professor and director of the Stanford Center for Societal Networks, a prominent research initiative to make societal networks smarter, more scalable and more efficient. Urban Engines has raised an undisclosed amount of money led by

Google Ventures GV is a venture capital investment arm of Alphabet Inc., founded by Bill Maris, that provides Seed investment, seed, Venture capital financing, venture, and Growth investing, growth stage funding to technology companies. Founded as Google Venture ...

. Andreessen Horowitz, SV Angel, Greylock, Samsung Ventures, early Google investor

Ram Shriram Kavitark Ram Shriram (born 1956/57) is an Indian-American billionaire businessman and philanthropist. He is a founding board member and one of the first investors in Google. He was earlier employed by Amazon, working for Jeff Bezos. Shriram cam ...

and Google Chairman

Eric Schmidt Eric Emerson Schmidt (born April 27, 1955) is an American businessman and software engineer known for being the CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011, executive chairman of Google from 2011 to 2015, executive chairman of Alphabet Inc. from 2015 to 20 ...

also participated.

References

{{Reflist 2016 mergers and acquisitions Defunct software companies of the United States Google acquisitions Companies based in Silicon Valley