Firefly finds $21.5m spark

Firefly, a US-based outdoor advertising screen supplier backed by Stanford-StartX Fund, has secured $21.5m in a seed round led by venture capital firm NFX, VentureBeat reported on Thursday.
Fellow VC firm Pelion Venture Partners also featured in the round, as did Decent Capital and angel investor Jeffrey Housenbold, managing director of telecoms firm SoftBank’s Vision Fund.
Founded in 2017, Firefly leases digital billboards to taxi drivers in conjunction with municipal authorities to beam out geotargeted advertisements and service announcements for brands, businesses and charities.
The screens are intended to give rideshare contractors an additional source of income while also collecting data for city authorities around urban metrics such as mobility and air quality.
Firefly officially launched last week after a pilot program involving 50 marketing campaigns and 110,000 hours of on-road testing. It reserves at least 10% of its advertising capacity for non-profit bodies, public sector announcements and other non-commercial organisations.
Firefly’s earlier investors include Stanford-StartX Fund, an investment vehicle backed by the university. Chesterfield Investments, Industry Ventures, Muse Capital, Cross Culture Ventures, and angel investors Toby Sun, Brad Bao and Patrick Schwarzenegger have also backed the company, though further details could not be ascertained.
Kaan Gunay, co-founder and CEO of Firefly, told VentureBeat: “Unlike many other startups, we started Firefly with a community-first mentality — we sought to have community baked into our product, ingrained in the DNA of our company, rather than tacked on as an afterthought.
“To do that, we are working closely with stakeholders from all aspects of urban communities that drive value, wages and insights.”