Distracted driving is a leading cause of car crashes — and rising auto insurance premiums, which are expected to increase in 2025.
For commercial fleets, that’s an expensive challenge to navigate. But for California-based startup Netradyne, it’s a tailwind.
Netradyne provides fleet owners, including big names like Amazon, with AI-enabled dashcams that collect vehicle data and video to improve driver safety, reducing crashes by around 50%, according to the company. The devices, which can come equipped with inward and outward-facing cameras, also use edge computing to send drivers real-time notifications if they’re distracted or driving dangerously, while rewarding drivers for good behavior.
TechCrunch last reported on Netradyne’s $150 million Series C in 2021, and since then the company has expanded beyond North America and India and into Germany, the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand. To further that growth into Ireland and into Japan in the coming months, Netradyne has just raised a $90 million Series D at a pre-money valuation of $1.25 billion, led by Point72 Private Investments with participation from Qualcomm Ventures and Pavilion Capital.
And with great expansion comes great data. Over the years, Netradyne has accumulated more than 18 billion miles worth of data, which the company says has helped improve the product to a point of 99% accuracy of alerts and 25 million better compliance scores.
The fresh capital will also go towards improving the product and enhancing go-to-market investments.
Fleets can access Netradyne’s branded Safety Manager Assistant, an AI-powered co-pilot that offers a natural language interface to the company’s portal and uses generative AI to have conversations about data and insights.
Avneesh Agrawal, CEO and co-founder of Netradyne, told TechCrunch the company would invest more into generative AI, adding additional use cases to its co-pilot and a more “agentic approach.”
Agrawal also noted that Netradyne would use its vast data to develop foundational driving models with a focus on corner-case driving scenarios to enhance autonomous driving technology.
“We have rich vision data analyzing every aspect of road and driving behavior and reading different road signs. No one in the autonomous industry has this kind of data,” Agrawal said. “Our objective now is to train a driving model using generative AI to identify these edge cases.”
He added that it’s not Netradyne’s intention to develop its own AV technology, but rather to partner with others and offer the startup’s data and insights.
Netradyne’s customers span fleets operating in online retail, food and beverage, oil and gas, utilities, construction, and more. The startup provides two main products. The first is a quad-view dashcam that collects footage from road-facing, driver-facing, and two side window cameras all in one easy-to-install device. This captures driver behavior, reduces blind spots, and provides evidence in case of an accident. The second is a dual-view camera, which faces both the road and the driver.
Fleet owners that need more visibility can use the Hub-X add-on, which is an extension to the dashcam that supports up to four additional cameras to be placed anywhere they’re needed, like facing the back of a bus.
The startup also offers a driver-monitoring solution, which can be added onto the quad camera to detect drowsy driving behaviors using a dedicated sensor with nighttime detection and the ability to see through most sunglasses, according to the company.
In response to concerns around driver privacy, Agrawal says Netradyne is GDPR compliant and never provides personally identifiable information of drivers externally.
“Investing in Netradyne is about believing in safer roads and supporting professional drivers,” Sri Chandrasekar, Managing Partner at Point72 Private Investments, said. “Since our initial investment in 2018, we’ve witnessed Netradyne’s impressive growth and believe their technology is well-positioned not only to empower fleet managers but also to foster a culture of safe driving.”
Agrawal said Netradyne has seen 65% growth in the last 12 months, and expects to be net profitable in the next year.
