On the face of it, the smart city market is bleeding. In May 2020, Alphabet pulled the plug on Sidewalk Toronto, the company’s ambitious smart city project in Canada. One year later, the company scrapped two other smart city projects in Portland, Oregon, and Kansas City. While the trend of large-scale smart city projects seems to be waning, the markets for smart technology, including AI, facial recognition and the Internet of Things (IoT), are rapidly growing and attracting customers from the public sector.