Next Insurance acquires Denver-based insurtech startup Juniper Labs in first-ever acquisition

It’s been three months since we wrote about Next Insurance, an Israeli-founded insurtech startup that provides coverage for small businesses and entrepreneurs. Next Insurance uses artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to tailor insurance policies for its customers.

Today, Next Insurance announced its first-ever acquisition of Juniper Labs, a Denver, Colorado-based insuretech startup that provides alternative open data and underwriting technology for small businesses. The terms and the amount of the transaction were not disclosed. The announcement follows Next Insurance’s $250M Series D funding round we reported back in September. The funding back then put Next Insurance at a $2B valuation. To date, Next has raised a total of $631 million in venture capital funding.

The acquisition will further innovation in workers’ compensation and general liability product offerings through advanced machine learning capabilities. Together, the combined companies will continue to develop enhanced machine learning capabilities and tools to strengthen the omnichannel customer experience.

Founded in 2019 by Lance Poole and John Stevenson, Juniper Labs leverages open data and machine learning to help insurtechs, carriers and brokers to more effectively sell and underwrite small business insurance. Juniper Labs’ suite of APIs provides structured insights and predictive models that allow more precise risk assessment and a simpler customer experience. Juniper Labs provides better risk transparency by leveraging open data and machine learning to build tools for streamlined data collection and automated underwriting.

Using natural language processing, Juniper Labs blends fragmented data sources and unstructured content to provide more structured insights that strengthen the confidence and predictive power of their models, ultimately allowing for more precise risk assessment and a simpler customer experience.

As part of the acquisition agreement, Juniper Labs co-founder and CEO Lance Poole, and his team, will join Next Insurance’s machine learning and data analytics group and will help launch the Next Insurance Data Labs. The purpose of the lab is to combine human-centric design, actuarial science, and state-of-the-art machine learning to provide scalable, industry-leading solutions that drive growth and risk-based pricing. Additionally, the Juniper Labs team will help strengthen and scale Next Insurance’s workers’ compensation offering (among other lines of business), which has seen nearly a 14x increase in year-over-year growth since November 2019.

“The insurance sector is primed for innovation and our growth this year not only speaks to the industry’s potential but the benefits that can result from leveraging the right technologies and focusing on customer experiences,” said Sofya Pogreb, COO of Next Insurance. “This strategic acquisition of Juniper Labs’ technology and expertise in workers’ compensation will deepen our investments in relevant technologies such as machine learning, which will help scale pricing and decision making. We look forward to bringing on the Juniper Labs team to further our goal of being the one-stop-shop for small business insurance.”

“Next Insurance and Juniper Labs believe that data is a key differentiator in the effort to provide a better online experience at a more affordable price,” said Lance Poole, co-founder and CEO of Juniper Labs. “We’re excited to join this like-minded company and contribute to its continued success.”

Founded in 2016 by Israeli entrepreneurs Nissim Tapiro, Guy Goldstein, and Alon Huri in 2016. The Palo Alto-based Next Insurance is an online-based insurance company for entrepreneurs and small businesses. The startup is revolutionizing a historically complicated insurance industry by utilizing AI and machine learning to simplify the purchasing process and drive down costs by up to 30% compared to traditional policies.

Next offers general liability, professional liability, commercial auto, and, most recently, workers’ compensation coverage and says its policies are tailored, easy to understand, and easy to buy with instant, 24/7, online access. Next also employs a team of 85 people in Israel with the rest of its 200-person team based in the U.S.