Technology insurance startup gets $2.5M in early round

Koop focuses on autonomous tech

Koop Technologies, a startup that specializes in insurance for autonomous vehicles, robots and other technologies, has raised a $2.5 million seed round.

The company, which is based on the North Side, announced the funding round Monday.

Koop, as one investor put it, is aiming to act as a “critical bridge” between the insurance and technologies industry.

The company collects data from autonomous vehicles and robotics companies and uses it for insurance underwriting, cost of risk and claims handling purposes, officials said. Those types of technologies are often underinsured because they rely on new data types and unknown risk factors.

“Our team has built a whole new insurance experience and set of tools around data sharing for robotics clients,” said cofounder and chief commercial officer Kamron Khodjaev.

“With the rapid adoption of automation technologies, the risk landscape changes across many use cases, and the only way to properly handle those risks is with the help of highquality data,” Mr. Khodjaev said. “We learned first-hand about a lot of insurance pain points that developers and operators have to go through to get appropriate coverage.”

Koop pictures its insurance solutions could be used in a wide range of industries, including agriculture, warehousing and logistics, trucking, construction and mining.

The latest funding round

would help bring the insurance platform to more customers, officials said. It was led by Ubiquity Ventures, based in Palo Alto, Calif.; Bee Partners, in San Francisco; Sure Ventures, in Mountain View, Calif.; and WestWave Capital, in Redwood City, Calif.

The company was founded in 2020 and has four employees.

Koop was one of four Pittsburgh-based startups chosen to showcase its mission and technology in a June pitch-off hosted by TechCrunch, a Bay Areabased tech and startup news outlet.