Software that makes a city's old cameras finally earn their keep.
A traffic camera bolted to a pole in 2011, still pointed at the same intersection, now filing a report every second. Nobody asked it to get smarter. GridMatrix did.
GridMatrix is a software company that treats a city's existing roadway sensors - cameras, radar, induction loops, and increasingly LiDAR - as an underused asset rather than a hardware gap to fill. Founded in San Francisco in 2021 by Nicholas D'Andre and Scott Hazard, both veterans of Apple and Amazon's operations and supply chain teams, the company sells a cloud platform that reads those existing feeds and turns them into continuous measurements of congestion, signal timing, emissions, and safety incidents. No new poles. No new procurement fight over hardware. Just an AI layer over what a department of transportation already owns.
Cameras, radar, loop detectors, and LiDAR feed the same pipeline - the platform doesn't require a single sensor standard, which matters because cities never actually have one.
Spent three years at Apple as a Senior Global Supply Manager, overseeing several hundred million dollars in annual spend across sensor, RF test equipment, and engineering suppliers. Before that, he managed inventory and distribution for Amazon's retail business using big data analytics.
Part of the founding team that built GridMatrix out of a shared background in wireless technology, autonomous vehicles, transportation, and cloud software development.
GridMatrix's early proving ground was some of the most congested crossings in the country: the George Washington Bridge and the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, all operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. In 2024, that relationship expanded to Port Newark and the Elizabeth-Port Authority Marine Terminal - the busiest container port complex on the U.S. East Coast - where the software now tracks security, vessel activity, and facility efficiency in addition to traffic.
Departments of transportation, cities, port authorities, and university campuses, including:
Procurement runs through channels built for government buyers: Texas DIR contracts, AWS Marketplace, Vertosoft, TXShare, and cooperative purchasing programs - the unglamorous rails that most public-sector software actually ships on.
Nicholas D'Andre and Scott Hazard start GridMatrix in San Francisco, building on shared experience from Apple and Amazon.
Co-led by 8VC and Cota Capital, with Alumni Ventures Group, Intensity Ventures, and The Y Startup Index participating.
GridMatrix launches real-time transportation analytics with the City of Peoria.
Additional funding brings total capital raised to roughly $10M.
GridMatrix expands its Port Authority relationship to Port Newark and the Elizabeth Marine Terminal.
Teams with HDR and MetroPlan Orlando to deploy AI road safety software under a federal Safe Streets and Roads for All grant.
The platform is built to ingest cameras, radar, loop detectors, and LiDAR simultaneously. Most cities never standardized on one sensor type, so GridMatrix didn't ask them to.
The core sales pitch skips the capital-heavy part of smart-city projects entirely - it reads what's already mounted on the pole.
Available through Texas DIR, AWS Marketplace, and cooperative purchasing programs - the slow, unglamorous rails that public-sector software actually has to run on.
GridMatrix sits alongside other AI-driven traffic and infrastructure analytics vendors - companies like Rekor Systems, Miovision, and Iteris - all competing to be the software layer above roadway sensors. The differentiator GridMatrix leans on is breadth of sensor compatibility rather than a proprietary hardware line.