inCitu Raised $2 Million to democratize City Planning via Augmented Reality

inCitu, a NYC-based company that brings future physical developments to life via augmented reality (AR), announced a $1 Million support from Schmidt Futures, the philanthropic initiative of Eric and Wendy Schmidt, in addition to another $1 Million from other notable investors and initial customer traction. The company enables informative public-facing AR visualizations of proposed and upcoming development projects with customers across the US comprising cities, real estate developers, technology companies, and other stakeholders in the future of urban development.

“City planning is too slow, obscure, and expensive for the pace of development required in cities today,” says Dana Chermesh-Reshef, Founder & CEO of inCitu. “Facing climate change, severe housing shortage, public health threats, mass urbanization and major geo-political shifts, cities worldwide must adapt fast and effectively, but the obsolete systems prevent equity in the design and decision making process, leading to a lack of trust, collaboration and inclusivity amongst residents and industry professionals”.

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inCitu allows anyone to see and explore how the built environment is changing around them, in real scale, in-situ. They turn massive piles of messy, archaic data into beautiful, informative, accurate visualizations of future skylines and buildings, and provide that data to technology companies as well. Obsessed with lowering the friction for city dwellers to access city planning information, all of inCitu’s content – from individual buildings, affordable housing, mixed use developments, through parks and bridges and to complete neighborhood rezoning and regional infrastructure – are available via mobile-AR, with no headsets or special devices required.

In 2020, Chermesh-Reshef, an Israeli architect and a former F-15 and F-15I flight simulator trainer from the Israeli Air Force who turned urban data scientist (NYU CUSP 2018), was one out of six selected top impact entrepreneurs to join Schmidt Futures’ Entrepreneur-In-Residence program. This Fall, after concluding the two-year program, Schmidt Futures provided $1MM in support to inCitu, adding to the company’s pre-seed funding from at.inc/, CityBldr, Global Futures Group, H/L Ventures, the WXR Fund, amongst other strategic investors from the real-estate and smart cities worlds. In 2022, inCitu signed two key partnerships with Snap Inc. and Esri, amplifying their data and impact through the well-known platforms.

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The company recently achieved a huge milestone of reaching more than 100K residents with a real under-review Midtown Manhattan development proposal shared in AR, making it the most visible planning proposal in the history of city planning. Another impactful project inCitu recently launched in partnership with Snap and the Annenberg Foundation is the world’s largest Wildlife Crossing coming up in 2025 in California to repair the damage made by highway 101 to the local habitat and is now accessible in AR to all neighbors and visitors throughout its construction.

“With the support of global leaders in technology and real estate, inCitu is poised to help democratize and revolutionize how citizens visualize the future of their own neighborhoods and cities,” said Chermesh-Reshef. “We are restoring trust and transparency into how cities, developers, communities, and technology companies interact to allow for urban development.”

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