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Otonomo

Automotive dataIsrael
New to Unitard
🤝 Acquired
Peak $1.4 BillionToday
~-95%
from peak
  1. 🦄
    Became a unicorn
    2021
  2. 📈
    Peak valuation
    $1.4 Billion ’21
  3. 💔
    Became a Unitard
    2022
  4. 💸
    Last valuation
    ~$70M
Current status
Reverse-merged into roadside-assistance firm Urgent.ly in 2023 after its market cap fell to ~$70M

The rise & fall

6 moments · 2015–2023

The key moments, with employee sentiment along the way.

2015
Founded in Israel
Ben Volkow pitches a marketplace for connected-car data, sitting between automakers and app developers.
TechCrunch
2021
The peak: a $1.4B Nasdaq SPAC debut$1.4B
Merges with Software Acquisition Group II and lists on the Nasdaq — unicorn status arrives with the ticker.
TechCrunch
2022
Reality misses the deck
About $2M of revenue lands in a quarter it had projected far higher; the stock gives up roughly 95%.
Calcalist
2022
Falls out of the club
The car-data marketplace never finds enough buyers, and the SPAC-era valuation evaporates within a year.
Globes
From the inside · Glassdoor reviews, 2021–23
Glassdoor reviews echoed the struggle: employees repeatedly described an unclear product still hunting for market fit and hesitant leadership, and recalled layoff rounds — one landing just before Christmas — before the Israeli site closed in the merger.
Feb 2023
Reverse-merged into Urgent.ly
With its market cap near $70M — about 5% of the SPAC price — Otonomo is absorbed by the roadside-assistance firm to form Urgently.
TechCrunch

💬 entries paraphrase anonymous, unverified reviews posted publicly on Glassdoor ↗; dated facts carry their source.

How it happened

Otonomo was an Israeli connected-car startup building a marketplace for vehicle data between automakers and app developers. It went public on the Nasdaq in 2021 via a SPAC merger with Software Acquisition Group II at a $1.4B valuation.

It badly missed forecasts — about $2M of revenue in a quarter it had projected far higher — and the stock fell roughly 95%; by early 2023, its market cap near $70M, it agreed to a reverse merger with Urgent.ly.

Source: Globes / Calcalist / TechCrunch (Israeli connected-car data marketplace; Q2 2021 SPAC merger with Software Acquisition Group II at a $1.4B valuation; revenue came in far below projections; market cap fell ~95% to ~$70M; reverse-merged into Urgent.ly in Feb 2023 to form Urgently)

Founder

  • Ben Volkow
    Founder & CEO
    Now CEO/Co-Founder at QIZ SecurityLinkedIn ↗

Current roles as self-reported on LinkedIn, retrieved 2026-08-19. See our methodology.

Disclosed investors (17)

Historical funding participation; lists may be incomplete and do not establish current ownership or investor losses.

* Lead in a funding round · Crunchbase ↗ · 2026-10-13 · Methodology · Leaderboard

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