EchoTwin AI, a pioneer in AI-powered urban infrastructure intelligence, today announced the successful close of its $8 million seed funding round led by Metis Ventures, alongside a global syndicate of strategic and financial investors.
The smart cities sector is experiencing unprecedented momentum, fueled by rapid urbanization, surging demand for sustainable infrastructure, and breakthroughs in IoT, AI, 5G, and edge computing. These drivers are reshaping how municipalities plan, monitor, and manage urban environments—unlocking new opportunities for resilience, efficiency, and improved quality of life.
Many cities without modern technology deployments continue to face steep challenges: reactive and costly infrastructure maintenance, persistent traffic congestion, heightened environmental strain, and widening gaps in public safety. Lacking a unified, intelligent view of operations, municipalities remain locked in a cycle of fixing problems only after they occur.
EchoTwin AI’s platform breaks this cycle. By transforming everyday municipal fleets into real-time, AI-powered urban sensors, EchoTwin creates a living digital twin of the city. This dynamic model enables cities to move beyond reactive maintenance to predictive, self-healing operations, automatically detecting and resolving infrastructure and compliance issues before they escalate.
At the core of EchoTwin’s technology is its proprietary visual intelligence engine with full spatial reasoning capability. Combined with patented AI and ML frameworks—including a Vision-Language Model (VLM) that also provides semantic traffic violation detection—EchoTwin empowers urban communities to deploy fleets as infrastructure guardians, delivering compliance, safety, and resilience at scale.
The leadership team behind EchoTwin AI brings deep experience, having deployed thousands of edge-based AI systems globally across mission-critical, high-complexity environments.
“With up to 70% of the global population expected to live in cities by 2050, urbanization is placing unprecedented stress on infrastructure worldwide,” said Chris Carson, founder and global CEO of EchoTwin AI. “Our mission is to help cities evolve from smart cities to cognitive cities. EchoTwin equips municipalities with real-time visibility and actionable intelligence to automatically detect, predict, and resolve urban challenges. With our platform, cities can truly ‘see, think, and act’—delivering cleaner, safer, and more sustainable self-healing urban ecosystems.”
The funding will accelerate EchoTwin’s international expansion in the rapidly growing smart cities market, which is projected to reach $4 trillion by 2030 with a compound annual growth rate of 18% to 20%, with fleet-based AI monitoring emerging as the fastest-growing segment.
“EchoTwin is rewriting the infrastructure playbook—one that hasn’t fundamentally changed in decades. Instead of embedding sensors into concrete, Chris and his team are transforming moving fleets into real-time infrastructure intelligence. It flips the smart cities script. They’re not just building technology for cities. They’re building an AI-powered cognitive layer that helps cities think, manage, and self-heal,” said Merve Zabcı, managing partner of Metis Ventures.
EchoTwin AI is actively piloting its platform with major agencies across an impressive list of dynamic global cities across the United States, Europe, and the Middle East.
With the smart cities global market projected to nearly double over the next five years, fueled by technologies that enable real-time monitoring, analytics, and automation, EchoTwin AI is leading the smart cities category—enabling cities to become more resilient, adaptive, and intelligent.
About EchoTwin AI
EchoTwin AI is a leader in infrastructure intelligence, redefining how cities are managed. Powered by a proprietary visual intelligence engine with full spatial reasoning, EchoTwin transforms municipal fleets into mobile urban sensors—creating living digital twins that provide real-time insights into infrastructure, compliance, and safety. By enabling municipalities to proactively monitor, predict, and resolve issues, EchoTwin helps build resilient, self-healing, and sustainable urban ecosystems. More than “smart cities,” EchoTwin is advancing the era of cognitive cities—urban environments with the awareness to see, think, and act on challenges in real time. Learn more at www.echotwin.ai.
Media Contact
Chris Carson
CEO, EchoTwin AI
chris.carson@echotwin.ai
