Mojio Takes $8 Million Series A Investment From Telekom Capital

Vancouver’s Mojio, developers of a connected car platform, have raised an $8 million Series A round of funding, led by Telekom Capital, the investment arm of Deutsche Telekom, with an assist from Relay Ventures, BDC and AOL co-founder Steve Case.

Steve Case first connected with Mojio while watching them pitch at a Google For Entrepreneurs demo day last April, after which Case surprised the company with a spontaneous $100,000 contribution.

While many have been skeptical of a relatively small player like Mojio’s ability to competed in the connected car market, with Google’s Android Auto and Apple’s CarPlay platforms in the mix, this international validation goes a long way to ensuring that Mojio has a solid future in the rapidly growing automotive space.

Deutsche Telekom only recently launched Telekom Capital, a 500 million Euro global venture capital fund.

“This investment is the first outside of Europe for our latest fund. It fits right at the heart of what we are looking for: a scalable open platform addressing a gigantic market. We look forward to supporting Mojio in every possible way,” said Telekom Capital CEO Vicente Vento.

Mojio’s product, a cellular device that plugs into the on-board diagnostic (OBD) port of a car, unlocks the data of any automobile built after 1995, most of which feature an OBD port, and connects it to the internet. One the device is plugged in, the car owner can then access the car’s data via an app.

The open-platform nature of Mojio’s device means that it now has over 500 developers working on developing applications.

“At Mojio we strive to deliver a continuous and ever-expanding relationship with our customers. Fundamentally, that is completely missing in today’s car ownership experience and is no surprise when nearly every car on the road is severed from the Internet,” said Mojio CEO Jay Giraud. “With the strong support of Telekom Capital, we can now bring our vision for the Internet of Cars to drivers around the world.”

Mojio previously raised a $2.3 million seed funding round in October 2013, from Relay Ventures and BDC.

This new funding round will go towards fueling Mojio’s international expansion and help it to develop its automotive app marketplace.