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Friday, Mar 29, 2024

Startup to Insure Driverless Cars

Entrepreneur Dan Peate has started two InsureTech companies, both located in the Conejo Valley. First came Hixme, an Agoura Hills company that works to make group insurance more flexible for employees. And now Peate has Avinew, a Westlake Village startup working on insurance for autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles. The company recently received $5 million in seed funding led by Crosscut Ventures Management LLC in Santa Monica. The money will be used to build up the tech platform and keep developing the various products that will be rolled out over the next several years. “We have a feature product roadmap that we are working on,” Peate said. “Most of that is pretty secret at this point.” Avinew’s first product to come later this year will be insurance for self-driving and semi-autonomous cars. The company uses artificial intelligence and machine learning that can pull data from the cars to determine when the auto pilot features are engaged. “We created a methodology by which we discount the auto insurance based on how often you engage those features,” Peate said. The rise of connected cars, appliance, lights and other applications will change the way that insurance is done, he added. Historically, insurance rates have been based on data collected over a number of years to predict future behavior. With the Internet of Things and connected cars, a company like Avinew can predict risk in real time instead of having to wait 10 years to collect the data, Peate said. “That’s what makes the autonomous vehicle such an exciting thing,” Peate added. “It is not only autonomous, it’s also connected.” The west San Fernando Valley and the Conejo Valley make for a good place to start an InsureTech company, Peate explained. For one, there is a burgeoning tech community in the Westlake Village and Agoura Hills area, anchored by the California Lutheran University incubator and other startups. These companies in turn have attracted the attention of venture capital from Silicon Valley and elsewhere, Peate said. Additionally, in the Warner Center there is an abundance of insurance companies, including Farmers Insurance Group, Zenith Insurance Co. and Anthem Blue Cross. Cargo Drone Sabrewing Aircraft Co. Inc has received $1.8 million in funding to help in development of its vertical takeoff and landing cargo carrier drone. The Drone Fund was the lead investor in the Camarillo startup, with Idaten Ventures and several others contributing. The Drone Fund, in Tokyo, was created by investors to encourage drone startups. Because of the interest of the fund and other Japanese investors – Idaten is also based in Tokyo – Sabrewing has opened an office in that country. Chief Executive Ed De Reyes said he was excited to have the continued support of the Drone Fund and to have their continued interest in Sabrewing.  “Our partnerships with investors continue to grow in Tokyo and we are excited to open our office and have a presence in Tokyo so that we can continue to grow and expand our relationship with investors,” De Reyes said in a statement. Sabrewing will use the investor’s money to complete a full-sized pre-production prototype of their Rhaegal air vehicle and to begin preliminary flight testing in anticipation of a Series A round in the third quarter. Sabrewing has received permission to begin flight tests in Alaska as early as the fourth quarter. The Rhaegal is a gas-electric hybrid that is capable of taking off and landing vertically. It will be able to carry an 800-pound payload and be remotely controlled for commercial operations and fully autonomous for military applications. Kotaro Chiba, co-founder of the Drone Fund, said the Sabrewing drone can address the issue of pilot shortages and truck driver shortages in Japan. “Sabrewing’s product as such is a semi-autonomous, remotely-piloted large cargo drone that will solve these critical issues, and the company has the potential to form a new transportation network using large drones,” Chiba said in a statement. Conejo’s Startup Weekend Startup Weekend Conejo Valley will take place at Hub 101 in Westlake Village from March 29 to 31. The three-day event brings together developers, programmers and designers with mentors and entrepreneurial professionals to form teams and learn what it takes to create a startup. The first day will include a pitch session where attendees have 60 seconds to present an idea for a startup to solve a social, financial, technological, educational or environmental issue. Teams are then formed after the participants vote on the best ideas. Over the next 54 hours, the teams will work to create a prototype of web apps, mobile apps or hardware. Sunday night, the results are shown to a panel of judges. Staff Reporter Mark R. Madler can be reached at (818) 316-3126 or [email protected].

Mark Madler
Mark Madler
Mark R. Madler covers aviation & aerospace, manufacturing, technology, automotive & transportation, media & entertainment and the Antelope Valley. He joined the company in February 2006. Madler previously worked as a reporter for the Burbank Leader. Before that, he was a reporter for the City News Bureau of Chicago and several daily newspapers in the suburban Chicago area. He has a bachelor’s of science degree in journalism from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

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