Moovit Ltd., the Israeli startup behind a hugely popular public transit app with 120 million users worldwide, today announced that it has landed a $50 million investment led by Intel Corp.’s venture capital arm.

More than a half-dozen existing backers contributed as well. Among the participants were Sequoia Capital, BMW iVentures and Ashton Kutcher’s Sound Ventures.

Moovit’s massive installed base isn’t the only factor that helped it secure the new investment. There’s also the fact that the users who rely on the app to plan their urban travel routes collectively generate more than 1 billion “movement data points” per day about buses, trains and other forms of public transport in 2,000 cities worldwide. Moovit started monetizing the information last year with a suite of analytics services geared toward municipal planners looking to improve travel experiences.

Intel may be looking to put the startup’s data to use as well. As part of the investment, Moovit is set to launch a collaboration with Mobileye, the autonomous driving company that the chipmaker acquired last March for $15.3 billion.

One potential focus for the partnership may be Mobileye’s Road Experience Management project. It’s a cloud-based platform that will use information from various crowdsourced sources, such as the cameras on certain smart vehicle models, to generate maps that can be employed by autonomous cars to improve navigation of their surroundings. Moovit’s continuously updated public transit records may potentially add a valuable new dimension to the data.

As for the startup, it plans to use the new capital to continue expanding. Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Nir Erez said that he expects no fewer than one billion people to adopt Moovit by 2021.

In the long run, the startup’s growing data troves may also lead to more autonomous driving partnerships. Companies such as Uber Technologies Inc. that are currently building self-driving taxi fleets, for instance, could potentially use Moovit’s information about urban dwellers’ travel patterns to find suitable target markets.  

Image: Moovit