Gig economy service startup Gridwise closed a $12.7M Series A

A Pittsburgh mobility startup just added to the flow of early-stage funding rounds the city has seen so far this quarter.

Gig economy business platform startup Gridwise announced today that it had closed on a $12.7 million Series A round. The funding was led by Cross Capital, with follow-on support from Autotech Ventures, Switch Ventures, Massive VC, Mountain State Capital, Scribble Ventures, 412 Venture Fund, Riverfront Ventures and DashAngels. Of those, Mountain State Capital, 412 Venture Fund and Riverfront Ventures — the early-stage investment arm of Innovation Works — have Pittsburgh offices.

This Series A round comes after a $3.3 million seed round for Gridwise at the start of 2020. The company also announced that it had a 400% year-over-year revenue run-rate growth, and that this $12.7 million round brings the total amount of investment capital raised by Gridwise to $20 million.

It marks the latest deal for Pittsburgh tech companies this quarter, following a $12 million Series A for OtterTune, a $6.5 million Series A for Arieca and a $3 million Series A for ThoroughCare.

The Gridwise app enables drivers in the rideshare and delivery gig economy to better understand how they can maximize earnings and understand key metrics of their jobs, like earnings, expenses and mileage tax deductions all in one place. It also aims to connect them to resources and worker benefits like health insurance, phone plans and credit boosters. Gridwise reports that over 10% of all active gig drivers in the US use the app each month, and that the platform has enabled drivers to track over $5 billion in earnings across over 100 million trips on 60 different rideshare and delivery platforms.

“Drivers have been dealing with a significant amount of challenges that stem from individual gig platforms’ limitations in providing them the insights and benefits they need to best operate their part-time or full-time gig business,” Gridwise cofounder and CTO Brian Finamore said in a statement. “We are able to empower this rapidly growing workforce with a platform that helps drivers truly understand their performance, find new work opportunities, and continuously optimize how they work, regardless of which platforms they work for.”

While helping drivers access new insights and benefits through the app, Gridwise also began building a trove of data on its clients’ mobility. In doing that, the startup launched Gridwise Analytics, a new enterprise data-as-a-service platform for drivers that includes insights into supply and demand patterns, worker wages and utilization across all mobility platforms. Cofounder and CEO Ryan Green alluded to the formation of this platform when Technical.ly spoke to him at the end of last year.

In addition to expanding its team and adding new product capabilities to its main platform, Gridwise noted that it will also use the new funding to rapidly scale Gridwise Analytics.

“Partnering with top-tier mobility, finance, and gig economy investors to scale our data capabilities will further empower not only workers but also enterprises across 19 industries that we’ve already validated. We’ve brought to market the first ground truth accessible gig mobility insights that can enable enterprises and cities to improve their operational planning, inform go-to-market, fairly compensate workers and offer better site selection,” Green said in a statement. “Gridwise Analytics further enables us to execute on our mission of improving the way people and goods move in cities by providing first-party insight into that gig mobility activity at a time when this data has been completely inaccessible.”

Gridwise did not immediately respond to requests for comment for more details on its employee count, hiring plans and other initiatives that will be supported by this new funding.

Sophie Burkholder is a 2021-2022 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Heinz Endowments.