Glydways, a creator of autonomous electric pods that can move 10,000 people per hour through lanes that are even narrower than a parking space, had raised $170 million in its latest funding round, reports
Suzuki Motor Corporation, ACS Group, and Khosla Ventures led the funding round. Existing investors like Mitsui Chemicals and Gates Frontier, Bill Gates’s investment firm, also joined in. Obayashi Corporation, a major Japanese contractor, joined as a new investor.
With this new funding, Glydways has now raised over $250 million and is valued at around $700 million. Bloomberg reports that the company is also in talks to raise another $250 million, which could push its value above $1 billion.
Mark Seeger, a Dutch-born engineer and entrepreneur, founded Glydways in 2016. He previously worked as a product designer at Apple and spent several years in Singapore studying urban mobility. Glydways believes that simply deploying autonomous vehicles on regular roads will not solve congestion, since the roads themselves remain the main problem.
To solve this, Glydways uses a “Flow Network,” a small, dedicated guideway 2 metres wide. Its electric Glydcars run in one direction, picking up and dropping off passengers on demand without stopping. The company says its system costs up to 90% less to build than traditional rail, but can move just as many people.
Its main competitors include Amazon’s Zoox, May Mobility, Waymo and Tesla. Glydways stands out by using closed infrastructure. By controlling its own guideways, the company avoids many of the safety problems that have slowed the development of open-road self-driving cars.
The $170 million will pay for three pilot projects starting in 2026. One will be in the UAE, where Glydways has agreements with the Abu Dhabi Investment Office and Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority. Another will be in the New York City area, and the third will be in South Metro Atlanta, where construction on the first public system began earlier this year. The company plans to expand more widely in 2027.
Glydways now has about 270 employees and plans to double its staff over the next two years as it works on more than 20 projects around the world. If the next funding round goes through at a $1 billion valuation, the company will be much closer to becoming a unicorn, as its group of investors already hints.
