Wejo

British startup Wejo captures and analyzes data of autonomous, electric, and connected vehicles for customers worldwide. The company partners with vehicle manufacturers to provide services such as business insights, connectivity solutions, consultancy services, data marketplaces, data services, end-to-end insurance, and roadside assistance on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) basis. Its products include 1) “Journey Intelligence,” which aggregates unique journey data and provide insights, 2) “Traffic Intelligence,” which prepares traffic statistics reports using vehicle data, 3) “Vehicle Movements,” which provides vehicle location and journey information in real time or over time, 4) “Driving Events,” which provides insights to driver behavior; 5) “Winter Road Insights,” which provides insights to winter road conditions; and 6) “Road Health,” which facilitates data-driven proactive road maintenance. Wejo’s solutions use proprietary data sets that can source data directly from OEM-integrated sensors. As of February 2024, the company had sourced data from more than 13.8 million live vehicles on the platform, curated 752.9 billion miles, and ingested 19.5 trillion data points a day. 

In 2022, the firm launched a number of new services including Wejo labs , a self-serve, cloud-based platform to run traffic and mobility studies as well as a data service to enable users to request specific data and insights from historic traffic patterns from any specific location in the US, ‘ Wejo Autonomous Vehicle Operating System (AV-OS)’, a smart platform to speed up Autonomous vehicle (AV) development, and “DELIVEREE,” an autonomous vehicle prototype used to develop AV-OS. As of March 2023, Wejo had 57 pending and 3 granted patents. 

Key customers and partnerships

The company had partnerships with 29 automotive OEMs and Tier-1 suppliers as of December 2022. The company also has had product development partnerships with Microsoft, Palantir (a software company), and Sompo Holdings (an insurance company) since June 2021 and with diagnostics and automotive data provider Hella Gutmann Solutions since November 2021. It also has partnerships with Ford Motor in Europe and the US (2022), Mercedes-Benz (December 2021; extended in February 2023), Capitol Broadcasting Company of North Carolina (December 2022), Toyota (January 2023), and Renault (extended in February 2023) mainly to access connected vehicle data.

Wejo also joined The Eastern Transportation Coalition (TETC)’s Traffic Data Marketplace (TDM) in September 2022, to provide smart mobility insights and connected vehicle data to departments of transportation (DoTs) and other public agencies.

Funding and financials

During the year ended December 2022, Wejo reported revenue of USD 8.4 million, and an operating loss of USD 119.9 million. 

The company merged with special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Virtuoso Acquisition Corp, which took the company public in November 2021 (generating proceeds of USD 226 million and valuing the combined entity at USD 800 million). It also announced plans to merge with SPAC TKB Critical Technologies 1 in January 2023 to raise additional funds, but the deal was terminated in June 2023.

In July 2022 , Wejo also secured a USD 15.9 million additional PIPE (private investment in public equity) investment led by Sompo Light Vortex. The company intended to use the funds to ease its existing debt and equity facilities and extend its cash runway under current market conditions till the end of FY2023.

However, in May 2023, the company announced its intention to enter administration in the UK Court. The company is also considering filing insolvency proceedings for Wejo and its subsidiaries in jurisdictions including the US.