21 smart city startups with innovative urban solutions (2025)

Top smart city startups

Complete list of smart city startups that are worth knowing:

Athena SmartCities

Founded in 2022, Athena SmartCities develops technologies that help cities become more efficient, sustainable, and livable. Their main product is called AthenaCore, which is an integration platform that connects various city systems and services using wired and wireless networks.

The AthenaCore software acts as a central hub for all the data, applications, and communication flows in a city environment. It links things like transportation networks, energy grids, water systems, waste management, hospitals, traffic signals, and even public kiosks and wi-fi hotspots.

Smart City Factory

Founded in 2018, Smart City Factory bridges capability gaps between ambitious government conceptions and integration realities. Many imagined solutions like sensor-enabled autonomous transit or AI-assisted resource planning require reliable, unified networks first.

Smart City Factory’s offerings assess readiness then design frameworks managing access, analytics and automation appropriately. Modular platforms evolve flexibly alongside maturing municipal IQ while upholding stability, privacy and oversight at scale. For change-makers envisioning more agile urban environments, Smart City Factory organizes and orchestrates possibilities.

NavMobility

Founded in 2018, NavMobility leverages sensors and AI to unlock insights from roads and traffic patterns. Capabilities like highly precise LiDAR scanning and positional modeling visualize the physical world digitally in manipulatable environments.

Urban developers can then simulate the impacts of proposed changes using rich simulated geospatial representations. Models assess aspects like congestion, accessibility, collisions and emissions for various testing. For governments balancing complex mobility needs, NavMobility crystallizes cloudy unknowns through quantifiable replicas.

Kentyou

Founded in 2020, Kentyou tackles device data silos hindering many smart city initiatives. Municipalities often install sensor-based solutions from various vendors which can’t share readings collectively. Kentyou’s middleware software integrates otherwise fragmented streams.

Once ingested, built-in AI extracts meaning across noise. Advanced analytics provide actionable advisories to optimize planning around trends spotted systemwide. As urban overseers balance more complex environments, data-driven intelligence becomes critical when made digestible. Kentyou delivers those imperatives.

CM1

Founded in 2021, CM1 enables remote monitoring and coordination of disparate sites and equipment spread across vast works. Onsite, their GNSS-enabled “smart light” beams transmit locations to the cloud automatically for consolidation.

There, dashboards visualize everything in movement – from individual vibratory rollers to fleets of dump trucks. Teams can pinpoint machines, pull productivity metrics, replay jobsites remotely and more. For managers seeking to optimize diffuse field operations, CM1 concentrates intelligence into single views for each job.

DirtSat

Founded in 2021, DirtSat aims to expand regenerative urban agriculture exponentially using scalable tech-enabled solutions. Automated processes first audit existing roof geographies through proprietary algorithms tallying metrics like solar gain, weight allowances and visibility.

Top-ranked sites get custom garden buildouts with monitored planters maintaining optimal growing conditions. Integrated sensors continually upload environmental performance data to personalize each plot’s care, maximize harvests and substantiate broader ecosystem enhancements for stakeholders.

Roker

Founded in 2019, Roker confronts legacy parking pain points with elegant mobile-first solutions. Drivers can instantly locate, book and access available spaces while avoiding ticketing hassles. Owners monitor automate and monetize unused bays dynamically to maximize asset utilization.

Roker’s rules engine also incentivizes greener transport options by applying discounts for electric vehicles and carpoolers. Usage analytics help municipalities adjust policies and pricing leveraging real-time demand signals too. For all stakeholders, Roker’s insights unlock potential while positioning assets progressively.

EQuota

Founded in 2016, EQuota tackles ballooning energy overuse from disjointed sensors and equipment. Most older buildings still lack cohesion between isolated controls managing various equipment, supplies and outputs across fragmented zones.

EQuota conjugates those dispersed dimensions onto unified dashboards for cross-functional comprehension. Advanced monitoring reveals optimizations like reducing AC loads in underutilized spaces or lowering off-hour illuminations.

Circulor

Founded in 2017, Circulor confronts endemic supply chain opacity enabling unethical practices to persist unchecked. Even conscientious brands struggle tracing sub-suppliers across continents for true validation. Circulor’s decentralized ledger indelibly chronicles and shares shipment handling and associated ESG impact details immutably.

Partners can instantly inspect for compliance breaches, high-risk transit routes, toxic materials, forward market purchases and more while honoring confidential contracts. For corporations striving towards resolute sustainability, Circulor crystallizes full achievable views across deep, dark spend horizons. When even the most concealed actions surface uniformly, transformation gains footing.

Swiftly

Founded in 2015, Swiftly enables data-driven decision making to better connect people across essential city services. Agencies gain unprecedented visibility into usage metrics like delays, transfers, boarding and density patterns across the entire transportation network in one intuitive interface.

Powerful simulation capabilities then prescribe improvements using predictive analytics measuring comparative impacts on wait times, vehicle crowding, budget impacts and emissions extensively. When planning complex interconnected systems holistically, rough ideas refine rapidly. Swiftly evolves possibilities until realities feel actionably reachable.

VivaCity

Founded in 2018, VivaCity offers simulation capacilities previously only reachable via costly, time-consuming physical trials. Proprietary algorithms ingest streams from traffic cameras and sensors to recreate flows digitally first. Robust mobility databanks then allow modeling progressive redesigns using AI to forecast highest efficacies.

Engineers can virtually test radical interventions like bike highway networks, congestion pricing, light timing sequences and more to determine best community outcomes before pouring any concrete. For cities finally moving from reactive to proactive planning, VivaCity crystallizes the clearest paths ahead. Their solutions empower the next generation of possibility-driven mobility blueprints.

The Future Fox

Founded in 2018, The Future Fox confronts communication gaps separating governments from ground needs. Typically residents struggle providing inputs on proposals or tracking impacts once approved. By centralizing dialogues digitally, consensus and transparency improve.

Intuitive interfaces present complex zoning policies, land use changes and infrastructure plans to everyday users for feedback. Officials gain granular sentiment mapping from those affected. For communities pursuing open inclusion around growth, The Future Fox fosters vital collective connections into binding decisions.

UrbanLogiq

Founded in 2015, UrbanLogiq tackles analytics fragmentation hampering many public agencies. With relevant records spread across dated systems, extracting value feels impossible. UrbanLogiq’s analytics synthsize cross-departmental data otherwise trapped in spreadsheets and legacy servers.

Powerful mapping and AI peel obscured patterns and trajectories from amalgamated info. The software helps agencies predict at-risk communities, locate optimum placement for facilities, model policy changes and more. For governments striving toward more agile, informed institutions, UrbanLogiq clarifies cloudy unknowns to drive progress.

Green City Solutions

Founded in 2014, Green City combats rising urbanization and industrialization’s impacts through bioremediation. Their flagship CityTree product removes PM and nitrogen oxides using embedded moss bioreactors requiring only water and sunlight.

Housed in high design enclosures, CityTrees also benefit surrounding heat islands and biodiversity. Already mitigating tons of dangerous particulates, Green City Solutions scales research-backed soil science into responsible street furniture. For communities pursuing future-focused sustainability, their innovations literalize livable change.

Tepeo

Founded in 2019, Tepeo modernizes legacy heat generation decreasing its fossil fuel dependency. Their Tepeo TepBattery units utilize propriety phase-change composites storing thermal energy like batteries hold electric charges. Built-in controls shift charging intervals responding to variable rate pricing for systematic savings.

Offering easy retrofit installs, Tepeo’s sustainable systems maintain existing radiator configurations while reducing site emissions over 60%. For facilities and governments pursuing de-carbonization mandates, their turnkey equipment upgrades progress tangibly sans disruptions. When heat de-couples from hydrocarbons seamlessly, greener systems gain ground.

Ento Labs

Founded in 2021, Ento Labs applies advanced analytics to already pervasive IoT sensors and automation platforms. Most commercial facilities feature fragmented controls and isolated equipment emitting usage statistics independently. Ento ingests then contextualizes patterns hidden within siloed data lakes.

Powerful machine learning rapidly recognizes aberrant HVAC loads, lighting schedules, solar mismatches and more. Ento Labs then suggests and simulates corrective measures for maximum impact based on variables like occupancy, weather and energy pricing. For owners struggling to decarbonize aged assets, Ento Labs cost-effectively modernizes the status quo.

Urbio

Founded in 2020, Urbio expedites building-by-building decarbonization planning which previously relied on exhaustive manual audits. Their proprietary algorithms instead create digital twins mimicking unique asset energy flows. Integrated modules then compute highest impact interventions for sustainability gains.

With robust analytics pre-validating initiatives site-specifically, adoption accelerates. Large operators can upgrade hundreds of offices, plants or stores in parallel based on location-adjusted outputs vs generalized blanket policies. For companies balancing complex transition logistics, Urbio crystallizes cohesion across assets.

Rightcharge

Founded in 2020, Rightcharge confronts infrastructural hurdles slowing EV purchases like lack of charging access and complex installer coordination. Prospective buyers enter their address for instant compatibility assessments showing appropriate equipment.

Rightcharge handles permissions, sourcing, pricing and work orders end-to-end. Their model brings standardization driving down hardware costs long-term while making sustainable upgrades more accessible. With transportation poised to electrify, Rightcharge paves adoption avenues beyond early tech adopters.

Breeze Technologies

Founded in 2015, Breeze Technologies emerged as growing urbanization and climate impacts lowered air standards globally. Their easy to install sensors monitor parameters like particulates, allergens and emissions block by block. Cloud analytics then help officials pinpoint mitigation priorities whether policy changes or infrastructure upgrades.

Individual customers also use Breeze Technologies to assess personal exposure risks across neighborhoods or transit routes over time. For communities pursuing air quality improvements consciously, Breeze Technologies quantifies progress mile by mile. Their technology elucidates the path ahead through granular clarity.

NATIX

Founded in 2019, NATIX provides needed interconnectivity between fragmented legacy camera systems with limited scopes. Their E2E solution outfits existing CCTV with edge analytics to identify events like accidents or criminals. Unique IDs then trigger interconnected devices to collaboratively follow subjects across multiple feeds simultaneously.

With built-in AI coordinating automated handoffs, operation efficiency and response times improve dramatically sans manual oversight. NATIX essentially upgrades individual dumb observers into collectively astute networks. For cities struggling with siloed security visibility, their wide lens solutions merge panoramas from dispersed optics.

Bareways

Founded in 2017, Bareways digitizes travel intricacies within disjointed analogue sectors bogging movement. By structuring details across transit options, infrastructure, pricing and usage behaviors, previously fuzzy situations clarify. The result – systems visualizing progress paths at macro and micro levels.

Urban planners gain visibility developing bike lanes factoring traffic impacts and community needs. Companies optimize corporate transit and scheduling logistics for staff. Individuals receive route guidance balancing variables like expense, sustainability and convenience in context. For all, Bareways elucidates smoother ways forward.

Conclusion

Through innovative technologies that address pressing city challenges, these agile companies are launching transformative change to infrastructure and services underpinning city operations and citizen experience.