Rockstart, a global early-stage investor, has announced its investment in Lanterne, a portfolio company of Rockstart. The €400,000 seed round was co-funded by Rockstart and other investors. The United Kingdom-based startup will use the funds to expand its engineering and data science capabilities.

Lanterne is a data science and geospatial analytics company with offices in the United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia. Lanterne predicts demand for micro-mobility companies, allowing them to provide more rides, and optimizes fleet technicians’ routes, allowing them to complete the most tasks in the least amount of time. Additionally, Lanterne assists mobility companies with expansion planning and fleet performance monitoring. Lanterne is live in 12 locations across the United Kingdom and Europe. The fleet management market is projected to be worth more than USD 45 billion by 2027, driven by advances in artificial intelligence, increasingly sophisticated vehicle telematics, and the increasing use of scalable cloud-based fleet management solutions.

“We’re delighted to close this pre-seed round with Rockstart and our network of angels in the UK, Europe and Australia. We’ll be using these funds to double down on our engineering and data science capability to hit our scaling targets for 2022-2023. Shared mobility is highly dynamic and data-rich, and we’re very proud to be helping these innovative companies transform urban transport.” Alex Barnes, CEO, Lanterne.

“Lanterne’s AI-based software platform strongly improves vehicle demand predictions for micro-mobility operators. This allows them to continuously optimize the distribution of vehicles within a city and therefore increase usage and revenues of fleets. It’s a must-have for micro-mobility operators who want to improve the competitiveness of their core processes. We’re delighted to continue investing in Lanterne and its strong team who are driving the development and commercialization of this impactful solution.” Max ter Horst, Managing Partner Energy, Rockstart.

Earlier this year, the Rockstart Energy fund was closed at €27 million. In the coming months, the fund intends to make new investments in promising energy startups that are addressing decentralization, decarbonization, and digitalization. Since launching its Energy fund in October of 2020, Rockstart has invested in 19 energy-related startups from seven countries.