Finance and leasing software provider, Sofico, has bought Vinli, a US-based automotive artificial intelligence (AI) company, for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition aims to accelerate Sofico’s development of an intelligent AI-powered automotive finance and leasing platform. Vinli launched Velona in 2025, an AI fleet manager built to proactively manage fleets through specialised agents covering fraud, predictive maintenance, idling, safety, compliance and cost optimisation. The Velona platform uses aggregated operational data from various sources, to identify a list of priority actions that aim to drive economic value for the leasing company. Vinli has also developed a connected vehicle data platform called Era that collects data from any source and turns it into actionable intelligence. Together with Sofico’s Miles platform, Velona and Era will form Sofico’s intelligence layer, bringing proactive insight and action to every stage of the contract lifecycle. Ensure you always get Fleet News insight. Make us your preferred source on Google “This acquisition is about accelerating something we have been building towards,” said Wim De Bruyne, CEO at Sofico. “Every automotive finance and leasing company is sitting on an enormous amount of untapped intelligence: contract data, vehicle data, operational patterns, residual value signals, and customer data. “The data has always been there. What’s been missing is the layer that turns it into decisions. Vinli gives us that layer.” Matt Himelfarb, CEO of Vinli, added: “We built our company on a simple bet that the data inside contracts and connected vehicles can rewrite the economics of mobility, but only if operational decisions are tied to financial outcomes. That’s what Velona does. It turns operational signals into prioritised actions. “Sofico Miles sits at the centre of global leasing, and together we can put that intelligence in front of millions of contracts and vehicles. “There is no better home for what we’ve