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AI-based parking lot payment startup Metropolis raises $1.6 billion
Metropolis, which uses AI and computer vision to identify vehicles and take parking lot payments without any physical transaction, has raised $1.6 billion in combined debt and equity in a new fundraising round at a $5 billion valuation.
Already the largest parking lot operator in the U.S., handling more than 7% of licensed drivers (nearly 20 million people) across over 4,000 locations, the Santa Monica, California-based company is planning to use the capital for a major expansion across the retail sector, including gas stations, quick-service restaurant drive-thru windows, and hotels, as well as office buildings.
“With this new capital, we’re continuing to scale our platform and forge the foundation of the Recognition Economy, building a new paradigm for how AI is deployed in the real world,” said Alex Israel, CEO and co-founder of Metropolis, in the deal announcement.
The $1.6 billion capitalization includes a $1.1 billion senior secured loan and $500 million in Series D equity funding, led by new investor LionTree. Additional investors included Eldridge, 3L, SoftBank, DFJ, Tekne Capital, Vista and BDT & MSD Partners’ affiliated credit funds. It’s the largest round that the company has raised across its $2 billion in deals not specifically tied to an acquisition — Metropolis took parking lot operator SP Plus private in 2024, the largest private M&A deal of 2024. The company doubled the debt it was able to raise since its last credit market deal in 2024 in a new financing led by J.P. Morgan, which the company attributed to its expanding gross margins.
“Metropolis has proven what few companies have, demonstrating that AI can be commercialized at real-world scale,” said Aryeh Bourkoff, CEO of LionTree, in the deal announcement. “With applications extending across every sector of daily life, from retail and hospitality to fueling and more, the scale potential is extraordinary, and we believe this is just the beginning of a generational opportunity.”
Metropolis ranked No. 13 on the 2025 CNBC Disruptor 50 list.
Any driver that has used a Metropolis parking lot knows that the payment can be conducted with no waiting, no tickets, machines, credit cards, or apps. The company’s proprietary computer vision platform recognizes a “vehicle fingerprint” based on their unique characteristics. Users do have to first set up an account in the company’s app or on its website with basic profile information including a license plate number, though its technology is not limited to license plate scanning.
The company says it has been growing by one million members per month and sees a total addressable market of at least 50 million individuals. Across its current operations, Metropolis is handling $5 billion in annual transactions.
“The physical world remains hopelessly analog,” said Courtney Fukada, chief integration officer and co-founder of Metropolis, at the recent CNBC AI Summit in Nashville. “We started by fixing parking, partially because it’s ubiquitous and because it’s a nightmare,” she added.
As the company expands into retail locations including fueling and drive-thrus, it will be focused on a software-as-a-service model, with retail and real estate owners benefitting from offering the technology to their consumers. “We’re not going to go and buy 1,000 McDonald’s and suddenly franchise McDonald’s with our computer vision technology,” Fukada said. “We’re going to be licensing our technology to those operators.”
While the parking lot experience is more limited to making the payment transaction frictionless, Metropolis is betting that as it moves deeper across retail and the physical world, its ability to gather and analyze data on individuals will lead to a level of personalization that consumers prefer and that increases revenue opportunities for businesses, ushering in a “post-device world.”
“We know where people are actually moving in the real world, and we can start to put together essentially a member graph of their physical world footprint and insights,” Fukada said, data analysis that will be valuable to commercial real estate owners, and hotel companies. “It gives them information about what used to be a black box and used to just be kind of cash collections,” Fukada added.
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