Moovit

Moovit. Moovit is a global Mobility as a service and urban mobility application that provides real-time public transit information, journey planning, and multimodal navigation. Founded in 2012, it aggregates data from Transport for London, New York's MTA, and thousands of other transport authorities worldwide. The app is available in over 3,500 cities across more than 112 countries, making it one of the most extensive public transit data platforms. It was acquired by the Intel Corporation in 2020 to enhance its Mobileye autonomous vehicle division.

History

The company was founded in 2012 in Nir Ezofy by entrepreneurs Yaron Evron, Roy Bick, and Erez Mazor, with its headquarters established in Tel Aviv. Initial development focused on creating a crowdsourcing platform to complement official transit data from agencies like the Chicago Transit Authority. A significant early partnership was formed with Microsoft in 2014 to integrate Moovit's data into the Bing search engine. The company expanded rapidly, launching services in major metropolitan areas including Los Angeles, São Paulo, and Tokyo by 2015. In May 2020, Intel completed its acquisition of Moovit for approximately $900 million, folding it into its Mobileye subsidiary to advance development of autonomous vehicle mobility systems. Following the acquisition, Moovit continued to operate as a standalone consumer brand under the leadership of Nir Erez.

Features

The core application provides real-time arrival predictions, trip planning, and step-by-step navigation for various modes of transport, including bus, subway, train, ferry, bicycle-sharing system, scooter-sharing system, and ride-hailing services like Uber. A key feature is its community-driven "Mooviter" network, where users report issues such as crowding or service disruptions, contributing to a live transit map. The app offers accessibility information, helping users navigate stations with features for wheelchair users, and includes offline maps for areas with poor Internet connectivity. For urban planners and transit operators, Moovit provides Analytics tools through its "Moovit Insights" platform, which analyzes anonymized aggregated data to improve public transport network efficiency.

Business model and partnerships

Moovit operates on a Freemium model, offering its core transit app free to consumers while generating revenue through Business-to-business services and Advertising. Its "Moovit Solutions" division partners with cities, transit agencies, and corporations, such as the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority and Via Transportation, to provide white-label apps and data analytics. A major enterprise partnership was established with the Toyota Motor Corporation to integrate Moovit's mobility data into Toyota's transportation platform. The acquisition by Intel positioned Moovit's data as a critical component for Mobileye's self-driving car technology and its Mobility as a service ecosystem, aiming to power future robotaxi fleets.

Data and privacy

The platform aggregates data from thousands of official sources, including General Transit Feed Specification feeds, and enriches it with real-time user contributions. This crowdsourced data collection has raised questions regarding user Privacy and data Security. Moovit's privacy policy states that it collects location data, trip history, and usage patterns, which are anonymized and aggregated for its analytics products. The company complies with data protection regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation in the European Union and the California Consumer Privacy Act in the United States. Following the Intel acquisition, data-sharing practices between Moovit and Mobileye for developing autonomous vehicle systems have been a focus of scrutiny by privacy advocates.

Availability and usage

The Moovit app is available for free download on Google Play and the Apple App Store, supporting over 45 languages. It has been particularly adopted in dense urban centers with complex transit networks, such as Mexico City, Paris, and Mumbai. The service is integrated into broader smart city initiatives, for example, partnering with the city of Las Vegas for its Innovation District. According to company statistics, Moovit serves hundreds of millions of users globally and processes billions of data points daily to optimize routing and provide accurate real-time transit information across its vast network of covered cities.

Category:Mobile software Category:Transportation software Category:Intel subsidiaries