ZestyAI, a leading Artificial Intelligence (AI) startup based in the San Francisco Bay Area, has announced today the closure of its Series A financing round of US $13 million.
Dec 10, 2018 | 3 min Read
Luxembourg-based private investment fund, Blamar has led the financing. Plug & Play Ventures and existing investors also participated in the round demonstrating their continued commitment to the company. This funding confirms ZestyAI’s position as an innovative leader in the large-scale digital transformation underway in the $5 trillion-dollar global insurance industry.
ZestyAI harnesses the power of Artificial Intelligence to help Property & Casualty insurance carriers, reinsurers, Managing General Agents and Insurtechs better assess risk. The company has developed cutting-edge computer vision technology leveraging satellite and aerial imagery combined with structured data sources to capture billions of data points on buildings and their surroundings without ever setting foot on the premises. ZestyAI leverages machine learning to model multi-peril catastrophic loss events (e.g., hurricane, wildfire, flood etc.) at the property level with unprecedented accuracy.
ZestyAI insurance customers benefit from:
- Decreased loss ratios driven by more accurate underwriting,
- Tighter customer and agent relationships given a delightful, digital purchasing experience,
- Decreased expense ratios due to lesser need for physical inspections.
For example, the insurance industry was blindsided by the magnitude of losses in the wake of the California wildfires amounting to US$ 16 billion in 2017 and up to US$ 19 billion to date in 2018. Insurers rely on outdated Fire Hazard Severity Zone maps to assess wildfire risk that missed the mark in ~85% of the cases during the 2017 wildfire in Santa Rosa, CA. ZestyAI has released its wildfire model that integrates high fidelity property level features about vegetation, building materials, neighborhood characteristics, topography, weather patterns and more. ZestyAI uses machine learning to combine these unique risk modifiers, most of which have never been accurately captured before, with actual loss data from the various wildfire events into a predictive risk score that dramatically impacts underwriting decisions and risk mitigation strategies.
“We are honored that ZestyAI has chosen Blamar as their capital partner. Our long-term investment philosophy aligns closely with the momentous opportunity in front of the company,” said Laszlo Bots, CEO of Blamar. “We know Attila and Kumar well and have the utmost confidence in their execution capabilities.”
Partner insurance executives of Plug & Play, a leading Insurtech ecosystem of 80+ global insurance companies voted ZestyAI the Most Innovative Insurtech Startup in August 2018. “Many of our members are excited to partner with ZestyAI and the feedback on the product has been overwhelmingly positive,” commented Ali Safavi, Partner of Plug & Play Ventures. “This is the reason why we decided to invest in this financing round.”
“Artificial Intelligence will revolutionize the traditionally data-driven insurance industry and we are thrilled to be at the forefront of this massive change,” said Attila Toth, CEO and Co-Founder of ZestyAI. “We are immensely thankful to our customers, employees, investors and partners for enabling us to become a leader in this space.”
The company will use the capital infusion to expand its data science, engineering and customer success teams and ingest additional proprietary data into its platform.
About ZestyAI
ZestyAI is the leading partner for property & casualty insurance companies embarking on digital transformation. The company harnesses the power of artificial intelligence on cutting-edge data sources including aerial imagery to model risk to real property. ZestyAI leverages predictive algorithms on 130+Bn data points to understand the potential impact of natural catastrophes on individual properties with unprecedented accuracy. Insurance companies rely on these property risk insights to make smart marketing, underwriting and rating decisions. For more information, visit https://zesty.ai.