附近上门

North Carolina is having a good fourth quarter.

In October, North Carolina got a new unicorn in , a Raleigh-based cloud tech startup that raised a $100 million Series E. Also that month, Wilmington-based , which has developed a cloud-based operating system for financial institutions, announced it had raised $80 million in a round of funding led by

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Today, , a Charlotte-based mobility management platform, has closed a $65M Series D funding round.

New investors , and participated in the financing, bringing the company鈥檚 total raised capital to $125 million since it was founded in 2010. Previous backers include , , , and . The company declined to provide its valuation.

, Passport CEO and co-founder, said his company was initially formed as a mobile-based payment platform to allow municipalities to directly connect with their customers 鈥渢o process mobile parking transactions and make parking operations smoother.鈥�

Over the years, with a payment system at its core, Passport鈥檚 enterprise software has evolved to help serve government entities and universities as well. The platform gives users the ability 鈥渢o digitally coordinate all modes of transportation鈥� and implement 鈥渞eal-time, data-centric management鈥� of their curbside and streetspace. Specifically, its platform helps with mobile parking payments, parking enforcement, and digital parking permits.

Seamless mobility

Passport says it works with over 1,000 municipalities, universities and private operators in North America and the U.K. in major cities such as Chicago, Boston, Toronto, London, Austin, and Atlanta.

鈥淚n the future, almost everyone in the world will live in a city, so there鈥檚 no more important challenge to work on than how people move throughout communities and transact with cities,鈥� Youakim said, noting that Passport鈥檚 vision is of a world where 鈥渕obility is seamless.鈥�

鈥淭o bring this vision to life, we are creating an open ecosystem where any entity 鈥� a connected or autonomous vehicle, a mapping app, or a parking app 鈥� can leverage our transactional infrastructure to facilitate digital parking payments,鈥� he added.

Growth

The company has seen robust growth in recent years, with Youakim noting that revenue climbed 511 percent from 2015 to 2018. Passport also has doubled its headcount this year alone and now has more than 300 employees. It鈥檚 also acquired three companies over its lifetime, including one in 2019 鈥搃ncluding New York鈥檚

Passport plans to use the new capital to further invest in its mobility platform, with the goal of enabling cities 鈥渢o manage a complex mobility ecosystem from a single hub.鈥�

As part of the financing, from Rho Capital Partners will be joining Passport鈥檚 board of directors, along with from H.I.G.

In October 2018, I took a look at North Carolina鈥檚 growing startup scene. At that time, we found that venture funding in NC startups was up 154 percent to $2.57 billion for the year compared to $1.01 billion in all of 2017,聽 according to 附近上门 data.

Passport’s Series D represents one of the largest funding rounds ever raised by a Charlotte startup, according to 附近上门 data as cited by the .

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