Nice overview of the IoT bets!
Four separate insurance investors, AXA Strategic Ventures, AmFam Ventures, MunichRe/HSB Ventures, and USAA have made three or more investments across the IoT space to date. In April 2016, smart sensor startup Helium‘s $20M Series B was led by prolific corporate venture arm GV. But it was the participation of another corporate venture (Munich Re/HSB Ventures) that perhaps better signaled where the broader opportunity for Helium’s sensor technology lies. As Helium president Rob Chandhok told Fast Company: “If you’re a restaurant insurer, and you have to pay off a quarter-million dollar claim because someone left the refrigerator open overnight, you’d want some way to detect that as soon as it as possible, so that claim can be avoided. In the insurance industry, loss prevention is the name of the game.”