Manchester’s Wejo has partnered with tech giants Microsoft, Palantir Technologies and Sompo Holdings ahead of a public listing in the US later this year.
Wejo, which has already partnered with automotive giant General Motors, is aiming to become the manufacturer-agnostic industry standard in connected vehicle data.
It intends to create applications across multiple marketplaces, including automotive, smart city, fleet, insurance, mobility and payments.
Microsoft and Sompo have pledged a combined investment of £18 million as part of Wejo’s Private Investment in Public Equity (PIPE) financing, joining General Motors and Palantir Technologies as strategic investors as the scaleup prepares to list publicly through a merger with specially created public company Virtuoso Acquisition Corp.
Wejo now has a £90m fully committed PIPE and expects gross proceeds of more than £250m upon completion of the SPAC merger.
https://businesscloud.co.uk/is-it-time-for-london-to-finally-welcome-spacs/
“Wejo is committed to becoming the universal communications and data stack for all connected vehicles,” said Richard Barlow, founder and CEO at Wejo.
“The new relationships with Microsoft and Sompo, combined with the additional investment they’ve provided, validate our vision and provide us with the critical resources we need to continue to lead the market and unlock additional value streams.”
Under the new agreement, Wejo will build its suite of data and intelligence solutions on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. The companies’ long-term vision for their relationship includes the potential for Wejo’s integration into Microsoft’s data platform, including operational data stores, analytics, AI and machine learning, data sharing, data governance and business intelligence.
Every day, Wejo collects more than 16 billion data points and analyses 48bn journeys in near real-time across a network of 11m live vehicles from a supply base of more than 50m connected vehicles.
To date, the company has ingested more than 10 trillion data points from connected vehicles.
“Connected vehicle data creates the potential to drive broad transformation across industries,” said Sanjay Ravi, general manager of automotive, mobility and transportation industries, Microsoft.
“With Wejo’s extensive and growing data assets on Azure, together we have the opportunity to help customers make better business decisions, provide differentiated customer experiences, find new revenue streams and drive future innovation.”
Initial applications include traffic and insurance solutions, as well as remote diagnostics, integrated payments, advertising, retail and logistics. In addition, the companies are evaluating the use of Wejo for Microsoft mapping solutions.
The partnership with global insurance provider Sompo Holdings and Palantir creates an opportunity for connected vehicle data in the Japanese market that will accelerate the development of Wejo’s groundbreaking products and expansion into the APAC region.
Sompo will analyse the connected vehicle data from Wejo using the Palantir Foundry platform.
“Wejo holds a unique position in the rapidly evolving connected vehicle market, with a visionary leadership team and powerful technology,” says Shyam Sankar, Chief Operating Officer of Palantir Technologies.
“Foundry has powered data-driven R&D, customer service, early warning detection, risk management, and other critical workflows in this and other industries. We are excited to partner with Wejo, and further our partnership with Sompo, to power this critical work.”