The merger if executed will enable the British start-up to become a publicly listed company
The proposed merger reportedly values the enlarged Wejo at more than $1bn. (Credit: aymane jdidi from Pixabay)
Wejo, a UK-based connected car data start-up, is reportedly in talks to merge with a special purpose acquisition company Virtuoso Acquisition.
The deal will enable the British firm to go public with a post-transaction value of over $1bn, reported Bloomberg, citing two people with knowledge about the matter.
According to one of the sources, Virtuoso Acquisition is aiming to secure new equity to support the merger.
The terms of the negotiations could be changed and are yet to be finalised. It is also possible that the talks between the parties may not result in the planned merger.
Established in 2014, Wejo is engaged in organising billions of data points from millions of connected cars. Backed by investments from General Motors and others, the company partners with automotive manufacturers across the world to stream data at both scale and speed.
Wejo is said to leverage big data for creating new revenue streams, for identifying incident and congestion hotspots, and predicting and preventing build-up and reducing emissions. The company’s data is also used for helping drivers to easily find a parking spot, and for making the charging of electric vehicles simpler and cutting down commute times.
It has developed a cloud-based data exchange platform called ADEPT, which is said to organise big data on a global scale. ADEPT is used for sharing and accessing connected vehicle data in a secure, compliant, and flexible manner.
The data and insights offered by the 10.3 million cars on the company’s platform are claimed to be licensed to mobility businesses ranging from traffic analysts to parking app developers, smart city planners to governments.
Last week, the company in a partnership with location intelligence specialist Esri had launched a new joint solution designed to augment the latter’s geographic information system (GIS) technology with data from connected vehicles.