Cambridge Mobile Telematics (CMT), an eight-year old data analytics firm that measures and analyzes driver performance through their smartphones, recently announced that it has received a $500 million investment from SoftBank’s Vision Fund.
CMT’s technology is currently aimed at insurance firms that use the data on driver behavior to refine their pricing policies and automate parts of the claims process. The company, however, believes that its proprietary technology could also be used in other business processes where the ability to define behavioral risk is needed.
Mike Wheatley reported on CMT for Silicon Angle. Here is an excerpt from his report:
CMT sells software that relies on smartphone sensors to measure “distracted driving” and other metrics that can be used to determine the price of a driver’s insurance policy. The company also builds connected devices that can be installed in cars and send out an alert should an accident occur. Those devices can also assess the vehicle’s performance for actuarial scoring.
Hari Balakrishnan, the company’s co-founder and chief technology officer, said the company has “helped make roads safer by making drivers better in a world where crashes are rising due to factors like distracted driving.”
Analyst Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. said the size of the funding amount isn’t such a surprise because digital transformation is affecting all industries. He said telematics is a key area of disruption where previously unknown behavior can now be converted into data streams and be used to help determine business relationships.
“CMT is one of the more obscure enterprise software vendors in this space, but it is well positioned to take advantage of this transformation,” Mueller said. “But to do so it needs to invest more into its product, and that’s where SoftBank’s investment comes in handy. Now we have to see how many CMT powered devices will become part of our future relationships with insurers and other risk measuring enterprises.”
