Autonomo acquires the Israeli company Neura for $ 50 million

Autonomo acquires the Israeli company Neura for $ 50 million in a deal that combines cash and shares. For Niura investors, including Pitango and Liberty funds, this is not a success, as the company, which was founded in 2013, has since raised $ 32 million. Niora provides information and data-based insights into the world of smart transportation, an area it entered in 2018.
Autonomo collects information from smart vehicles and makes it accessible to customers from various fields, such as insurance companies, smart cities, and car suppliers. Niora works differently - it not only provides the data, but also the insights, and therefore expands the autonomous activity.
"If until today we were making softeners for making pizzas, now we are starting to supply the pizzas themselves. We see that this is a market trend and we have received a lot of requests from customers to take the needle out of the haystack," says Ben Volkov, CEO and founder of Autonomo, in a conversation with TheMarker. Our competitor has received a strategic investment from Planetir, which does similar things. We believe that the market is going in this direction and think that the right way for us is not to create partnerships, but to have these capabilities within the home. "
According to the press release, Niora was founded in 2013 by entrepreneurs Uri Shashua, Trino Maggie and Gil Meller, who were joined by Amit Hamer, the company's CEO. Another founder, whose name did not appear in the announcement, is Gilad Meiri, who also served as the company's CEO until the end. 2017. In its early years it dealt in a different field. Niora has developed a technology that has allowed it to collect anonymous information about users through mobile apps. The company formulated insights through information analysis and thus enabled brands to get to know their customers better and tailor offers to them.
Autonomo recently became a public company, and its stock began trading about a month and a half ago on Wall Street. The entry into the New York Stock Exchange was made through a merger with Spock - a company without activity that raises capital and then seeks a private company to merge with. Autonomo's value in the merger was $ 1.25 billion, and the company raised about $ 250 million. Since the start of trading, the stock has fallen by half, and the company is traded at a value of $ 625 million, which reflects an activity value (excluding the cash in the company's coffers) of less than $ 400 million.
"Of course I'm not happy or happy about it. On the other hand it's not related to business, because we did not communicate anything negative. On the contrary, on the contrary - we advertised a partnership with Amazon (+ 0.98% 3221), with Salesforce (+ 0.34% 271.77) and with the leasing company "The biggest in the world. I think we suffer from the sentiment towards the spook market and low marketability. Our business is good, healthy and sturdy," says Volkov.