Nexar and Nauto to Merge, Creating the Independent Infrastructure Platform for Physical AI

For the first time, organizations that build, operate, and insure intelligent systems have access to insights and intelligence that are grounded in reality.

NEW YORK and SUNNYVALE, Calif., July 1, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Nexar, the real-world intelligence platform for the Physical AI era, and Nauto, the leader in AI-powered safety and vehicle intelligence, today announced they have entered into a definitive agreement to merge. The transaction brings together two leaders in real-world driving intelligence, combining complementary AI models, datasets, technologies, and customer relationships. The result is the leading independent intelligence platform of record for how the physical world actually behaves while ensuring full privacy protection by anonymizing and de-identifying data. Zach Greenberger, Nexar's CEO, will be CEO of the combined company. Stefan Heck, Nauto's founder and CEO, will chair the combined board. Financial terms were not disclosed.

"By bringing together Nexar and Nauto, we are building the world's largest and most diverse independent foundation for real-world intelligence," said Greenberger. "For the first time, the organizations that build, deploy, and operate intelligent systems have a trusted, independent record of how the world actually behaves, not just how it has been simulated. That is what lets organizations ask the physical world questions and act on the answers."

Upon closing, the combined company will establish the industry's most reliable foundation for Physical AI. Its intelligence engine will be fueled by more than 300 million real-world miles captured every month across 50+ countries, representing over 10 billion miles of driving history. That scale, independent of any single manufacturer, powers intelligence that no simulation and no single company's dataset can match.

Every organization asks different questions of the physical world. Until now, they've had to answer many of them with incomplete information. For the developers building autonomous and intelligent systems, it now provides the independent real-world record their models depend on: the edge cases no lab has replicated and the ground truth no single manufacturer can supply. For the safety and operations leaders running fleets, cities, and infrastructure, it predicts and prevents what matters most before it becomes an incident and turns what happened into intelligence that improves every decision that follows. For insurers, it prices risk on what roads and drivers actually do, not on averages.

Existing customers will continue working with the teams, products, and support organizations they rely on today. What changes is the foundation underneath them. By bringing Nexar and Nauto together, customers gain access to deeper intelligence, more predictive AI, and a broader understanding of how the physical world behaves.

"Every organization we work with needs the same three things: to understand what is happening right now, to learn from what happened before, and to predict and prevent what has not yet come to pass," said Heck. "For the first time, all three exist in one place. Together, Nexar and Nauto bring a scale and independence that turn those answers into decisions anyone can act on."

The combined company does not build the vehicles, pick the winners, or compete with the systems it measures. That structural independence is what makes the record trustworthy. 

BofA Securities, Inc. served as financial advisor to Nauto in connection with the transaction, and Fenwick & West served as legal counsel to Nauto.

The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions. When the transaction closes, the combined company will share additional details about its roadmap and vision for helping organizations better understand, predict, and verify what happens in the physical world.

About Nexar

Nexar operates one of the world's largest independent real-world driving networks, capturing more than 100 million miles of real-world driving every month across 94% of US roads and more than 50 countries. Its data and models power safety, intelligence, and verification tools for automakers, autonomous vehicle developers, insurers, and government infrastructure clients. Nexar's BADAS is the industry's leading incident prediction model, ranked first across all major real-world driving benchmarks. nexar-ai.com 

About Nauto, Inc.

Nauto develops AI-powered safety and risk technology for enterprise fleets, vehicle manufacturers, and insurance companies, helping them prevent collisions and improve driver performance before incidents occur. Its real-time safety platform consolidates driver behavior, fleet risk, road context and maneuvers and core telematics into a single system, built on more than six billion miles of commercial driving data. More than 1,000 fleets worldwide depend on Nauto to prevent risks before they turn into collisions and loss. nauto.com

Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/3003022/Nexar_x_Nauto.jpg

SOURCE Nexar