Why we invested in Nexar

Some startups develop technologies that allow us to improve our ability to get things done. They might help you catch vulnerabilities, improve a sales process, or optimize one of a million other important tasks.

But every once in a while a company comes along that creates a platform to power many new products and businesses, with each one providing new revenue streams and bringing value to a wide range of different customers.

We believe Nexar is in the latter camp and is building a platform not just to power the future of driving, but also how consumers and businesses search the physical world for actionable data. As a result, we are excited to announce that we have are a part of Nexar’s $52 million Series C round.

Our decision to invest is based on Nexar's exponential user growth over the past few years; its proven ability to collect, harness, and process massive amounts of video footage; and of course, its ability to build out new services in the near future made possible by 5G.

Going the distance with exponential growth

For those who are less familiar with Nexar, this is a company that offers value on multiple levels. Based on Nexar-powered dashcams and the use of AI, the company has built a network that records millions of rides and connects drivers with real-time alerts of road hazards and incidents. As such, Nexar has become a driver's companion for safer and stress-free rides. Nexar leverages that data in a private and secure way for a variety of additional use cases.

Over the past year, the company has grown its network of users driving around with their cameras by tenfold, constantly collecting video of more than 70 million miles every month, across 1,000 U.S. cities.

While many platforms struggle to provide their users with value in the early days of operations before reaching significant scale, Nexar was able to give early dashcam users a simple way to record their travels from the start. Since its camera is always running, drivers are able to document collisions to help resolve insurance claims and other issues that might come down the road. (No pun intended.)

Collecting video data has also proven valuable for B2B and government customers as well. Insurance providers are can benefit from Nexar's insights, as can departments of transportation or municipalities that can its data to optimize road construction operations, traffic light prediction, or even pothole repairs. This can be accomplished without the need to send out local inspectors, which can reduce costs while making their provision of services faster and more efficient.

While successfully building a paying customer base across all of these channels is impressive enough, it is Nexar’s plans for the future that really piqued our interest.

Leveraging its network and the future of 5G

Building on its impressive network of users and dashcams constantly sharing street-level data, Nexar is revving up to offer an endless series of computer vision-based services. Chief among them will be the company's ability to make the physical world searchable in a similar way to how Google indexed the World Wide Web.

Need to know if a traffic light is out on 7th Ave? Chances are that a Nexar-outfitted vehicle passed by that intersection just minutes ago and can report back the most up-to-date intelligence to help the city get it fixed.

The data set is magnitudes larger and more precise than what many other companies will be able to offer any time soon. For customers, this creates a wealth of information at their fingertips to drive smarter decision-making and a faster ability to respond.

At the same time that Nexar is preparing to launch new products for B2B and government customers, Nexar has made sure not to leave their consumers in the dust. A larger network of Nexar-enabled vehicles will allow it to offer life-saving, beyond-line-of-sight services to warn drivers of unseen dangers, with vehicles alerting one another through low-latency connectivity that we expect to see with the introduction of 5G networking.

What comes next?

Nexar has shown an ability to quickly ramp up its operations in any area, meaning that it is simply a matter of demand for expanding to new locations and use cases -- and it has only scratched the surface for how its data can be harnessed. Coming out of this round, the company intends to grow its global presence with expansions to both Asia and Europe.

With the mass deployment of 5G networks across the globe, we can expect Nexar to begin rolling out new services that better serve their customers, using precise geographical and contextual information for everything from improving the service of autonomous vehicles to enabling smarter cities.

As investors in Nexar’s race to the top, we are excited to join the company as it prepares to shift into the next stage of its journey. Buckle up, because it’s going to be a terrific ride.