Underground Mapping Startup Raises $30M 

An Israeli startup that maps underground utilities for engineers working on power grids, oil and gas pipelines, and internet cables has raised $30 million in funding.

4M Analytics aims to become the ‘Google Maps of the subsurface’ by creating maps for underground infrastructure. It will help engineers identify and pinpoint underground utilities early in their projects to avoid spending too much time locating them, as well as accidents.

It has developed the 4MAP, which has compiled all utility data into one dashboard that is reliable, constantly updated, and is ready to be used.

The Tel Aviv-based company has raised a total of $45 million in its Series A round. The funding will be used to create a map of the United States’ subsurface infrastructure and grow their team. 

4M Analytics is currently focused on creating data for companies involved in telecommunications, water distribution, sewage, electricity, oil, gas, renewable energy (such as wind farms, solar panel fields), and roads.

“Until now, the construction industry has been forced to plan in the dark, based on incomplete, unreliable, out-of-date utility information, spending months looking through paper records, chasing contacts over the phone, and looking onsite for utilities, one-by-one and inch-by-inch,” said Itzik Malka, CEO and Co-founder.

“When a project is completed the utility data is often forgotten, requiring that the next project starts from scratch to get the same data.

“To give professional engineers a baseline of utility data that the different project stakeholders can actually agree on, we collect raw data from hundreds of thousands of sources – from remote sensing and satellite imagery to public records, conflate it together using a variety of self-developed AI capabilities, and verify it using both state of the art computer vision and proprietary mapping techniques.”

The funding was led by global software investor Insight Partners and ITI Venture Capital Partners, with participation from current investors. 4M Analytics was founded in 2020 by Itzik Malka, Yoav Cohen, and Nir Cohen.