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AI Leader Motive Raises $150M to Invest in Product, Go-To-Market Expansion

Insider Brief

  • Motive has raised $150 million in a new round led by Kleiner Perkins, with AllianceBernstein joining existing backers to help expand AI capabilities, international reach, and enterprise growth.
  • The company’s AI-powered platform supports nearly 100,000 customers across industries, enhancing safety, productivity, and automation in physical operations like transportation, construction, and energy.
  • Motive plans to grow its global presence — doubling ARR from large clients, launching in the UK in August, and expanding R&D in India — to meet rising demand for fleet safety and operational intelligence.

PRESS RELEASE — Motive, the AI-powered Integrated Operations Platform for the physical economy, announced that it raised $150 million in a new funding round led by Kleiner Perkins, with participation from both existing investors and new investor AllianceBernstein. This additional capital will enable Motive to accelerate growth by further expanding its AI capabilities, scaling internationally, and sustaining momentum with enterprise customers.

As part of this round, Ilya Fushman, Partner at Kleiner Perkins, has rejoined Motive’s Board of Directors. A long-time believer in the company’s mission and trajectory, Fushman led Motive’s Series A in 2015 and backed the company again in its Series F in 2022.

“Motive has solidified itself as a clear leader in bringing advanced AI to the physical economy,” said Fushman. “The company’s growth trajectory is a testament to the value it delivers to customers. We are proud to continue our partnership as Motive enters its next phase of global scale.”

“We continue to execute against a bold mission to empower the people who run physical operations with AI to make their work safer and more productive,” said Shoaib Makani, CEO and Co-founder of Motive. “This funding allows us to extend our AI leadership, enter new markets, and expand our teams to support the world’s largest and most complex operations.”

Funding will advance Motive’s AI roadmap and expand automation across its Integrated Operations Platform

With this funding, Motive will expand its AI capabilities to enhance every aspect of physical operations, including driver safety, which already helps organizations reduce collisions by up to 80%; service verification; preventive maintenance; fraud detection; and automated coaching. These developments are helping customers streamline repetitive tasks, improve safety, and increase productivity.

Motive expands go-to-market (GTM) efforts to meet rising enterprise demand in North America and around the world

Motive serves nearly 100,000 customers and 1.3 million drivers across industries like transportation and logistics, construction, oil and gas, utilities and telecoms, food and beverage, agriculture, the public sector, and more — including global leaders like FedEx Freight, Cintas, KONE, Davey Tree, ABM, and CRH. Since 2024, Motive has more than doubled its ARR from customers spending over $100,000, driven by the addition of hundreds of new enterprise customers and industry-leading net revenue retention of more than 130%.

Driven by strong global demand for its AI-powered platform, Motive is expanding its GTM operations and investing in R&D, customer success and support, and tailored capabilities to support large, worldwide organizations. The company is gaining momentum across North America, with rapid growth in Mexico and Canada, and is set to launch in the UK in early August to meet rising demand for driver safety and fleet sustainability solutions. This new funding will further accelerate R&D expansion in India, building on Motive’s early 2025 hiring initiative.

For more information, visit gomotive.com.

About Motive

Motive empowers the people who run physical operations with tools to make their work safer, more productive, and more profitable. For the first time, safety, operations, and finance teams can manage their workers, vehicles, equipment, and fleet-related spend in a single system. Motive serves nearly 100,000 customers from small businesses to Fortune 500 enterprises such as Halliburton, KONE, Komatsu, NBC Universal, and Maersk across a wide range of industries including transportation and logistics, construction, energy, field service, manufacturing, agriculture, food and beverage, retail, waste services, and the public sector.

Visit gomotive.com to learn more.

Contacts

Media Contact
press@gomotive.com

SOURCE

James Dargan
About the author
James Dargan

James Dargan is a writer and researcher at The AI Insider. His focus is on the AI startup ecosystem and he writes articles on the space that have a tone accessible to the average reader.

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