SAN FRANCISCO – Swift Navigation, the San Francisco-based tech firm building centimeter-accurate GPS technology to power a world of autonomous vehicles, announced that it has moved its headquarters to 650 Townsend Street, Suite 410, San Francisco, CA 94103 (located between 7th and 8th). The 670,000 square foot, six-story building in the South of Market Design District is known as the Zynga Building and is owned by the gaming company known for such hits as FarmVille, CityVille and Words with Friends. Airbnb is also slated to occupy significant space in the building in 2018.
Swift Navigation, which doubled in size in 2017, has been searching for the perfect facility to accommodate its rapidly growing team. Swift anticipates doubling its workforce again in 2018 and the new facility is three times as large as its former space. The new HQ will house the company's core departments, including Hardware Engineering, Software Engineering, Measurement & Positioning Engineering, Firmware Engineering, Engineering Operations, Product Engineering, Operations, HR, Marketing, Business Development, Sales, Product Management, Business Intelligence, QA Testing, Customer Support and the Executive Team.
This is an exciting time of growth for Swift Navigation and underscores the success we've had recruiting top engineers from all around the world to help us achieve our mission of enabling a future of autonomous vehicles, said Swift Navigation CEO, Timothy Harris. We are pleased to be settling into a much larger space to house our existing team of experts and to support new recruits joining the team from across the globe. Our new headquarters will help us extend our presence in San Francisco, support the company's growth strategy and enhance our ability to service existing and future customers worldwide.
The Zynga building meets Swift's requirement to install roof equipment with an unobstructed clear sky view so that Swift engineers can perform testing and development using the company's high-precision GNSS receivers that track carrier phase data from satellite constellations in orbit. Swift installed state of the art GNSS equipment on the building.
To support its devoted bike-to-work team, the building offers secure indoor bike storage. Swift team members also have access to a free shuttle to the new office from public transportation (Caltrain, BART, Muni and the San Francisco Ferry Building).
Its new headquarters is another step in the evolution of Swift, which in 2017 raised $34 million in Series B funding for its next generation high-accuracy GPS for autonomous vehicles. The Series B financing round was led by Forest Baskett and Greg Papadopoulos of New Enterprise Associates (NEA), with participation from existing investors Eclipse and First Round Capital. To date, the company has raised a total of $47.6 million in funding.
In 2017, Swift also demonstrated strong momentum by:
- Doubling its team size, particularly in engineering
- Shipping two new GPS products”Piksi® Multi and Duroâ„¢
- Being recognized in lists of Top 50 Best Places to Work and Top 25 Companies for Diversity
- Expanding operations internationally and to Detroit, Michigan
- Announcing technology partnerships with Carnegie Robotics and PolySync
- Earning the Forbes 30 Under 30 award
ABOUT SWIFT NAVIGATION
Swift Navigation, Inc. was founded in 2012 to make GPS positioning technology more accurate and affordable. Today Swift Navigation has gained a reputation for defining a new category of GNSS systems as the industry's first low-cost, high accuracy real-time kinematics (RTK) receiver. Its GPS and GNSS positioning products are available at a fraction of the price of the competition and deliver 100 times better accuracy than the GPS in a cell phone. Swift Navigation's technology benefits a multitude of industries and applications”including autonomous vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), precision agriculture, robotics, surveying and space. With its innovation and technology honored by Inc.'s 2016 and Forbes 2017 30 Under 30 lists, Swift Navigation is enabling a world where fields farm themselves, drones fly safely and autonomous transportation can take you home. Learn more online at swiftnav.com, follow Swift on Twitter @Swiftnav
