Welcoming Nexar

Early on at True, we recognized the incredible possibilities presented by the hardware revolution, and we have worked diligently to build the early stage market’s leading portfolio of connected device companies.

We have long seen hardware as simply the first step toward the integration of computing and the Internet into the fabric of our daily lives and work. Connected devices have given tremendous context to the world around us, whether it’s through the power of Fitbit, Ring or Peloton. And for every connected device, there is an order of magnitude greater amount of data produced—which in many cases is where the real magic lies.

Our portfolio has proven the tremendous potential of connected devices on the sea (OpenROV), in the air (3DR, Iceye) and on land (Understory, Renovo and more). Perhaps one of the biggest connected device markets of our time is the connected vehicle. But vehicles, connected or otherwise, have problems—especially when humans operate them. Ironically, many unintended consequences of the ubiquity of smartphones are enormous problems on the roadways. Texting, inattention, and the simple cognitive threshold of humans operating on increasingly complex roadways is a real societal problem.

Early this year, a product emerged that has become best known for capturing the incomprehensible follies of everyday drivers:

The company is Nexar, and the product is the world’s first AI-powered dashcam application for the iPhone. Since its release in early February, Nexar has seen explosive growth, and announced their Series A financing on Wednesday.

Nexar is creating a vehicle-­to-­vehicle (V2V) network, in which our phones are constantly communicating with each other, automatically monitoring the road. Using this network of connected phones, Nexar’s breakthrough technology and real-time data analytics use artificial intelligence to detect and notify users in real-time of dangers on the road that are beyond their immediate line of sight. Nexar expects to deliver more and more driver warnings and assistance as its network density grows. Today, Nexar works with professional drivers in San Francisco, New York and Tel Aviv, with plans to increase network density and roll out to at least five more cities this year.

Nexar’s Founders, Eran Shir and Bruno Fernandez-Ruiz, are an incredible technical team who worked together for many years at both Yahoo! and Dapper. Eran is a serial entrepreneur and investor who was previously EIR at Aleph, a VC out of Tel Aviv. Before Aleph, Eran ran the Global Creative Innovation Center for Yahoo!, where he was responsible for Yahoo!’s ad creative technologies strategy and portfolio, as well as the development of its next-generation ad creative personalization platform. Bruno is a seasoned CTO, architect, software engineer and technology investor. Prior to co-founding Nexar, he spent six years at Yahoo!, working in various capacities, including leading Yahoo’s native advertising platform, and as lead architect for the cloud and platform group.

At True, we invest in people first, and we love working with teams who know each other well and team up to tackle the biggest problems facing both our industry and communities.

As connected devices continue to revolutionize nearly every market, we’re incredibly excited to see AI and device technology applied to driver safety. Nexar’s product leverages AI, machine vision, sensor fusion and real-time networking to solve many of the problems of “connected drivers,” with the potential of saving the 1,300,000 people who die on the road every year. We’re thrilled to be partnering with them.

Eran, Bruno and team Nexar: Welcome to True!