Firefly Emerges From Stealth With $21.5M In Funding To Put Billboards On Top Of Uber And Lyft Cars

Seeing a triangle-shape advertisement atop a taxi is a pretty typical sight. Now a new startup called Firefly wants to bring digital advertising to the ride-hailing industry by putting billboards on top of Ubers and Lyfts, while sharing a cut of the money with drivers. And these aren’t just your typical taxi toppers: the company has infused them with a chock ton of sensors that measure everything from air pollution to pavement condition to turn each sign into a data collector meant to benefit cities and the environment.

“I firmly believe we have a civic duty to make our cities smarter and really add income to our driver partners,” says Firefly CEO and cofounder Kaan Gunay.

To bring its billboards to a greater audience, the company recently came out of stealth after a year of testing to announce it has raised a total of $21.5 million in seed funding from NFX, Pelion Ventures, Decent Capital, and Jeffrey Housenbold. The money will be used to help grow the team -- it plans to double from 30 to 60 people in its San Francisco headquarters -- and purchase more hardware to meet demand from drivers.

NFX Capital’s James Currier acknowledged that a company that makes both its own hardware while also building its own advertising network isn’t a normal venture capital bet. “Typically your biggest outcomes are a little counter-intuitive or a little counter-stream,” Currier said. “Ad-tech for the last decade has gotten just killed. It feels to me there should be opportunity there if you own the supply.”