Koop collects data from autonomous vehicle and robotics companies and uses it for insurance underwriting, cost of risk, and claims handling, enabling developers, operators, and insurers to make potentially more informed risk transfer and pricing decisions.

As insurers transition from evaluating human-centric risk to ‘machine-centric’ risk, Koop will attempt to build off-the-shelf tools and proprietary methodology to underwrite autonomy. That will mean utilizing alternative datasets and developing a novel risk scoring model to explain the distribution of unmanned risks.

The startup thus far has done a great deal of work establishing credibility in this new grey area. For the company to succeed however, it will need to do more than establish credibility, but deliver its product at the level of traditional insurers in a way that complements existing workflows. Its API-first approach suggests that they should have no problem doing so.