Montana-based onX, which makes navigation apps for hunting, hiking, off-roading, and other outdoor activities, raised an $87.4M Series B led by Summit Partners
David Erickson / Missoulian : Tweets: @david__erickson , @laura_scheer , and @missoulian Tweets: David Erickson / @david__erickson : The previous record venture capital investment in Montana was $47M for Submittable, also a Missoula tech company https://twitter.com/... Laura Scheer / @laura_scheer : The company's apps give users the ability to see 852 million acres of public land, 550,000 miles of motorized trails, 10,000 detailed hikes and routes, 60,000 campgrounds and cabins and hundreds of layers. https://missoulian.com/... via @missoulian and @David__Erickson @missoulian : It appears to be the largest-ever venture capital investment in Montana history. https://missoulian.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
onX's $87.4M Series B is the largest venture round ever recorded in Montana, nearly doubling the prior state record set by fellow Missoula company Submittable at $47M — a signal that consumer mapping is pulling serious capital far from the coasts. The round also lands onX squarely in a funding arc its closest competitor has already run: AllTrails went from Spectrum Equity's $75M majority-stake deal in 2018 to a $150M Permira round in 2021, then to $225M+ raised overall as it repositioned around helping users 'find your outdoors'.
The comparison matters because AllTrails proved the playbook onX is now funded to execute: turn free map data — public-land boundaries, trails, campgrounds — into paid subscriptions at scale. onX's dataset (852M acres of public land, 550K miles of motorized trails) targets hunters and off-roaders, segments AllTrails' hiking-first base only partially covers.
First-order effects
- Summit Partners' check gives onX the war chest to deepen its land-ownership data layers and push harder into paid subscriptions across hunting, hiking, and off-roading without near-term revenue pressure.
- AllTrails, already holding $225M+ raised and 1M+ paid subscribers, now faces a direct competitor with comparable capital attacking adjacent user bases rather than the same hikers.
Second-order effects
- The two best-funded players in outdoor navigation are likely to bid up the same inputs — trail data, land-boundary records, content partnerships — raising acquisition costs for any smaller mapping app trying to stay independent.
- State-level pride economics kick in: a record Montana round makes Missoula a proof point other non-coastal founders will cite when pitching investors outside traditional hubs.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, outdoor navigation consolidates into a few subscription platforms whose moat is proprietary geodata rather than app features — mirroring how AllTrails evolved from a trail-sharing tool into a broader outdoors platform after successive large rounds.
- Regional venture ecosystems gain a template: a bootstrapped-then-scaled local company can anchor a state's tech identity, as Submittable did before it and onX may extend now.
The trend: Consumer outdoor-mapping apps are maturing from niche tools into venture-backed subscription platforms, with capital increasingly flowing to companies headquartered outside traditional tech hubs.