Connected Car
One would think this would translate to fertile ground for startups whose mission is to help carmakers sell data. Instead, two high-profile companies in the space — Otonomo and Wejo — have been in dire financial straits. Wejo, a British startup that also completed a SPAC merger in 2021, is taking the creative route to shoring up its finances. So why the disconnect between automakers’ hefty software spending and Wejo and Otonomo’s paltry revenue? Ford, which said last fall that it’s expanding a deal with Wejo to help process car data for insurance companies, sells data through multiple channels — startups, insurance companies, data aggregators — depending on the use case, a spokesman said.