Wejo

Wejo

Wejo

British vehicle data company

Wejo Group Ltd was a British connected vehicle data start-up founded by entrepreneur Richard Barlow, headquartered in Greater Manchester, England.[2] Wejo collected in near-real-time 14.6 billion data points and analyzed 66 million journeys across a network of 10.7 million live vehicles from a supply base of over 50 million connected vehicles.[3] The Company offered a trading platform for connected car data and analytics. Wejo served customers worldwide and was founded in 2013.[4]

Quick Facts Company type, Traded as ...

The company, which was backed by General Motors, went through a special purpose acquisition (SPAC) merger in 2021.[5] The merger raised $330M for Wejo including $230M from the SPAC company Virtuoso and the other $125M from private investment in public equity (PIPE) financing.[6]

Wejo called in administrators at the end of May 2023, following a loss of investment capital.

History

Wejo was founded in 2013 above a Greek restaurant in Manchester.[2] Wejo, stands for "we journey," and at start-up it raised $157 million according to PitchBook from such investors as General Motors, which acquired a significant stake in 2019, German auto supplier Hella, DIP Capital and the British government.[7]

In November 2019, Wejo opened a second UK office in the centre of Manchester's technology and enterprise zone.[8]

Wejo participated in 3 rounds of funding following its founding and raised $120.2M in capital.[9] At one point, it was classed as one of the UK’s prospective billion dollar-valued firms.[10]

At the end of May 2023, Wejo called in administrators as it ran out of investment capital.

Partnerships

In June 2021 it was announced that Wejo would partner with Waycare to deliver a joint offering to 20 locations across the United States, with Wejo’s data supplementing Waycare’s existing data sources, providing traffic managers with a comprehensive understanding of conditions and the ability to not only detect and predict incidents, but also respond faster and more effectively based on real-world, near real-time data in a single platform from which they can all collaborate.[11]

On 29 June 2021, it was announced that Microsoft and Japanese insurance giant Sompo had joined Palantir in partnering with Wejo.[12]

Technology

Wejo streamed high volumes of anonymized vehicle data direct from the automotive manufacturer in real-time, before cleansing, normalizing, and processing it. It also standardized the data across data sources to ensure consistency.[13] The data was delivered from the vehicle source to the end-user customer within 32 seconds.[14]

Wejo had the largest number of accessible connected vehicles on its platform, with 42 million in 2019.[15] Up to July 2020, Wejo had curated over 140 billion miles of data.[16]

References

  1. [1]
    "Wejo Group Ltd 2022 Annual Report (Form 10-K)". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. 3 April 2023.
  2. [2]
    "Wejo is going places but stays loyal to Manchester". The Times. [dead link]
  3. [3]
    "Wejo, a Global Leader in Connected Vehicle Data, to List Publicly in the U.S. Through a Business Combination with Virtuoso Acquisition Corp". Business Wire.
  4. [4]
    "Bloomberg company profile". Bloomberg.
  5. [5]
    "Making Roads Safer With Connected Vehicle Data". Bloomberg.
  6. [6]
    "Vehicle data company Wejo to go public valued at $800m after reverse merger plans outlined". Business Live.
  7. [7]
    "British auto data start-up Wejo in talks to go public in $2 billion SPAC deal". Reuters.
  8. [8]
    Ord, Matthew (1 November 2019). "Wejo opens job-creating Manchester office". Insider Media Ltd. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
  9. [9]
    "Wejo Competitors, Revenue and Employees - Owler Company Profile". Owler. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
  10. [10]
    "UK Tech For A Changing World". Tech Nation Report 2020. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
  11. [11]
    "Wejo connected vehicle data integrated into Waycare traffic management platform". Traffic Technology Today.
  12. [12]
    "Connected vehicle data startup Wejo partners with Microsoft, Palantir, Sompo". Techcrunch.
  13. [13]
    "Best Practises Award Research - Connected Car Data Exchange Platforms Global - Customer Value Leadership 2019" (PDF). Frost & Sullivan. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
  14. [14]
    Frost, Adam (23 September 2019). "Trio of CV data-based traffic information products launched by Wejo". Traffic Technology Today. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
  15. [15]
    "The Global Vehicle Data Market - Global study 2020". Ptolemus. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
  16. [16]
    "wejo unifies data and machine learning to improve the driving experience". Databricks. 29 April 2020. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
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