Netradyne Raises $90M at $1.25B Valuation to Expand Smart Dashcams for Commercial Fleets

Distracted driving is a leading cause of car crashes — and rising auto insurance premiums, that is An increase is expected in 2025.

For commercial fleets, it’s a costly challenge to navigate. But for California-based startup Netradyne, that’s a tailwind.

Netradyne provides fleet owners, incl Big names like AmazonWith AI-enabled dashcams that collect vehicle data and video to improve driver safety, reducing crashes by about 50%, according to the company. The devices, equipped with inward and outward-facing cameras, also use edge computing to send real-time notifications to drivers if they are distracted or driving dangerously, while rewarding drivers for good behavior.

TechCrunch last reported Netradyne’s $150 million Series C in 2021, and the company has since expanded beyond North America and India and into Germany, the UK, Australia and New Zealand. To fuel that growth in Ireland and Japan in the coming months, Netradyne has just raised a $90 million Series D round 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 collected more than 18 billion miles worth of data, which the company says has helped improve the product to 99% accuracy of alerts and 25 million better compliance scores.

The new capital will also go towards improving production and increasing go-to-market investments.

Fleets can access Netradin’s branded Safety Manager Assistant, an AI-powered co-pilot that provides a natural language interface to the company’s portal and uses generative AI to communicate data and insights.

Avnish Agrawal, CEO and co-founder of Netradyne, told TechCrunch that the company will invest more in generative AI, adding additional use cases for its co-pilot and more “agentic approach.”

Aggarwal also noted that Netradyne will use its big data to develop basic driving models focusing on corner-case driving scenarios to enhance autonomous driving technology.

“We have rich vision data to analyze every aspect of road and driving behavior and read various road signs. No one in the autonomous industry has this kind of data,” said Aggarwal. “Our aim now is to train a driving model using generative AI to recognize these cases.”

He added that Netradyne’s aim is not to develop its own AV technology, but to partner with others and provide startups with data and insights.

Netradyne’s customers span fleets operating in online retail, food and beverage, oil and gas, utilities, construction and more. The startup offers two main products. The first is a quad-view dashcam that combines footage from road-facing, driver-facing and two side window cameras into one simple 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 who need more visibility can use the Hub-X Add-on, an extension of the dashcam that supports up to four additional cameras to be placed wherever needed, such as on the back of the bus.

The startup also offers a driver-monitoring solution that, according to the company, can be added to quad cameras to detect drowsy driving behaviors using dedicated sensors with nighttime detection and the ability to see through most sunglasses.

In response to concerns about driver privacy, Agarwal says Netradyne is GDPR compliant and never provides drivers with personally identifiable information externally.

“Investing in Netradyne is about trust in safe roads and supporting professional drivers,” said Mr. Chandrashekhar, Managing Partner, Point72 Private Investments. “Since our initial investment in 2018, we have witnessed Netradyn’s impressive growth and believe their technology is well-positioned to not only empower fleet managers but also promote a culture of safe driving.”

Netradyne has seen 65% growth in the last 12 months and is expected to be net profitable in the coming year, Agarwal said.