Wejo
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|
 Wejo logo | |
| Company type | Public company |
|---|---|
| Industry | Automotive Data |
| Founded | 2013 |
| Founder | Richard Barlow |
| Defunct | June 2023 |
| Headquarters | Manchester, England, UK |
| Products | Connected Vehicle Data |
| Revenue | US$8.4 million (2022) |
Number of employees | 275 (2022) |
| Website | wejo |
| Footnotes / references [1] | |
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]
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
[edit]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
[edit]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
[edit]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
[edit]- ^ "Wejo Group Ltd 2022 Annual Report (Form 10-K)". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. 3 April 2023.
- ^ a b "Wejo is going places but stays loyal to Manchester". The Times. [dead link]
- ^ "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.
- ^ "Bloomberg company profile". Bloomberg.
- ^ "Making Roads Safer With Connected Vehicle Data". Bloomberg.
- ^ "Vehicle data company Wejo to go public valued at $800m after reverse merger plans outlined". Business Live.
- ^ "British auto data start-up Wejo in talks to go public in $2 billion SPAC deal". Reuters.
- ^ Ord, Matthew (1 November 2019). "Wejo opens job-creating Manchester office". Insider Media Ltd. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
- ^ "Wejo Competitors, Revenue and Employees - Owler Company Profile". Owler. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
- ^ "UK Tech For A Changing World". Tech Nation Report 2020. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
- ^ "Wejo connected vehicle data integrated into Waycare traffic management platform". Traffic Technology Today.
- ^ "Connected vehicle data startup Wejo partners with Microsoft, Palantir, Sompo". Techcrunch.
- ^ "Best Practises Award Research - Connected Car Data Exchange Platforms Global - Customer Value Leadership 2019" (PDF). Frost & Sullivan. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
- ^ Frost, Adam (23 September 2019). "Trio of CV data-based traffic information products launched by Wejo". Traffic Technology Today. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
- ^ "The Global Vehicle Data Market - Global study 2020". Ptolemus. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
- ^ "wejo unifies data and machine learning to improve the driving experience". Databricks. 29 April 2020. Retrieved 7 July 2020.