Koop Technologies, a Pittsburgh-based insurance technology startup focused on bridging the gap between autonomous mobility and robotics companies and the insurance companies that represent them, announced it raised $2.5 million in seed funding from several Silicon Valley venture capital firms. It's looking to use the funding to help build out its product and intellectual property by focusing on acquiring new clients with a future goal to then use those relationships to engage with higher-level insurance professionals.
Palo Alto, California-based Ubiquity Ventures, a seed-stage venture capital firm that invests in early-stage and deep technology companies, led Koop's most recent round of funding. Pre-seed venture capital firm Bee Partners of San Francisco, seed-stage insuretech venture capital firm Sure Ventures of Mountain View, California and pre-seed and seed investing firm Westwave Capital of Palo Alto also participated in addition to "a number of strategic angel investors."
"As a VC investor, I see Koop as the critical bridge between the insurance industry and the autonomous cars/drones/robotics industries," said Sunil Nagaraj in a press release, a founding partner at Ubiquity Ventures who will join Koop's board. "It is rare to see such a well-timed company with such a well-suited team. Koop is a critical enabler of mass adoption of autonomy and robotics."
Founded in the summer of 2020 by graduates from the University of Pittsburgh and employees of the former Uber ATG autonomous vehicle division, Koop said it has since gone on to attract the attention of leading insurance companies and autonomous robotics companies around the nation and maintains a presence in 13 states as a licensed broker of property and casualty insurance.
Koop is looking to fill a void its Co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer Kamron Khodjaev said is present for many autonomous mobility and robotics companies when it comes to having insurance for their machines. Koop is aiming to tap into the autonomous mobility and robotics fields that are growing in Pittsburgh and elsewhere around the country to do so. But it's also providing a dashboard for interested insurance companies to examine the qualitative and quantitative data Koop captures from its clients in the autonomous and robotics industry to offer a better understanding of the sector's needs.
"We are here to help insurers, robotics companies and autonomy developers with our data-centric insurance platform," Khodjaev said.
Khodjaev said that with the adoption of robots and autonomous technologies across different industries, there is a shift happening in the insurance industry from the types of risks that are analyzed.
"We're moving from human-centric risk to machine-centric risk," Khodjaev said. "Our team has a bold vision with a unique story for Pittsburgh in an industry that is buckling up to grow exponentially."
Currently, Koop's employee headcount sits at four, though it hopes to expand that number via an active hiring campaign as part of its expanded product development plans it'll undertake as part of the new funding. It recently moved its headquarters from a townhome in Bloomfield to office space in the NOVA Place complex on the North Shore.
"We believe that Pittsburgh has a big future as a robotics capital of the world," Khodjaev said. "We believe that with the great talent that's in the city and with the great institutions here, there will be a lot more companies that are going to be forged, both in robotics but also in adjacent areas like us."
