Since 2020, State Farm® has worked with Whisker Labs and invested in bringing this innovative home safety offering to customers to help identify potential hazards that could lead to electrical fires in the home. With a predictive tool like Ting, customers gain some control and can help protect what matters most to them – their loved ones and their homes.

How does Ting work?

Download the app, plug in the Ting and connect via Bluetooth. Now Ting is ready to monitor your home’s electricity. The primary root causes of electrical fires – micro-arcs and sparks – happen in faulty wires and appliances, devices or loose connections and usually develop over weeks and months. Ting is designed to provide advanced warnings to help address these hazards prior to an electrical fire starting.

Free offer from State Farm

State Farm is offering Ting and three years of service at no cost to eligible customers to help prevent fires before they occur. To be eligible, you must have an active State Farm non-tenant homeowners policy, a smartphone and home Wi-Fi. Learn more at statefarm.com® (This offer is currently not available in AK, DE, NC, SD and WY).

In addition to the sensor and monitoring, if Ting identifies a fire hazard that requires professional repair, Whisker Labs provides up to $1,000 toward the labor repair costs to mitigate the electrical fire hazard. This makes it that much easier to act and help protect your family and property from electrical fire hazards.

“Ting has furthered a proactive approach to insurance,” says Chris Schell, SVP of Property and Casualty at State Farm. “It helps us meet customers where they are – in their homes – to help them protect their families and property. It also shows how committed State Farm is to innovation and evolution so we can explore new ways of providing the products and services customers want and need.”

Electrical hazards

Ting monitors the entire home for hazardous electrical arcing – including bad wiring, damaged appliances or devices, and faulty light fixtures. It also monitors for dangerous power originating from the homeowner’s electric utility service, as this can cause a fire in the home and other safety hazards. Ting alerts users of these fire risks along with important events through a smartphone app.

“Ting has identified and mitigated fire hazards in nearly 7,000 U.S. homes to date,” says Bob Marshal, CEO of Whisker Labs. “Like State Farm, we’re passionate about keeping families safe. Many times every day, Ting Fire Safety Team experts alert a homeowner to a hidden fire hazard, many of which stem from defective devices and appliances, in addition to home wiring and outlets. Preventing fires is simply better for everyone.”

So, as you look around your house and turn on the lights, plug in your laptop, make your coffee and use electricity in any number of ways, you could also have Ting to help monitor for potential electrical fires. 

Together, State Farm and Whisker Labs are helping more customers in more ways than ever before.

Go to statefarm.com for more information about enrolling in Ting or talk to a State Farm agent today. 

About Whisker Labs

At Whisker Labs, we help protect families, property, homes, and communities by preventing fires and providing incredible visibility into the health of the electric utility grid. Our breakthrough technology, Ting, delivers intelligent detection, localization, and mitigation of potential fire hazards before they can start a fire from a single DIY plug-in sensor. While on the job looking for home electrical fire hazards from faulty wiring, devices, or appliances, Ting also monitors the quality of power delivered to homes by the electric utility. Poor power quality can induce fires, damage appliances, and create electrocution risks inside a home. And across the broader community, the network of Ting sensors also provides expert grid monitoring in real-time, helping grid operators identify and locate incipient faults, which, left unaddressed, can escalate and serve as an ignition source for devastating wildfires in prone communities.

NEW YORK, Nov. 17, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Nexar, a leading AI computer vision company, announced today the completion of a $53 million Series D funding round led by Qumra Capital with the participation of State Farm Ventures, Catalyst Investments, Banca Generali, Valor and previous backers; Atreides Management, Corner Ventures, Regah Ventures, Aleph and more. Nexar is the leading provider of crowd-sourced visual data and with their data from hundreds of thousands of dash cams across the US and globally, they are second only to Tesla with the volume of image-data collected. The footage is contextualized with AI and provides valuable insights to cities, departments of transportation, automotive & insurance companies, and more. Erez Shachar, Managing Partner at Qumra Capital, will be joining Nexar's Board of Directors.

Nexar uses the footage it collects to create an AI-digital twin of U.S. roads and their surroundings. This dynamic representation provides real-time updates in a range of key areas such as work zones, road signs, road markings, potholes & many other elements, for a constant stream of accurate information. With this tool, city officials are able to plan, prioritize and fix issues at a much faster pace, while automotive companies are able to inform their autonomous vehicles of obstacles lying ahead.

This funding round comes on the heels of a two-year period when Nexar's Direct to Consumer camera business grew at a fast pace, making Nexar the leading dash cam consumer brand in the US. Nexar now has its "eyes" on 150 million miles of road every month. The collected image data gets anonymized and added to Nexar's database consisting of 4 trillion images.

Eran Shir, Nexar's Co-founder and CEO said: "When founding Nexar, my partner Bruno Fernandez-Ruiz came to the counter-intuitive understanding that the only viable path to truly turning the physical world digital, lies in a crowdsourced vision network that makes sense of the reality around us. In the last five years, we have worked to make that vision a reality by leveraging low-cost hardware and sophisticated AI to create a world previously only available through expensive and complex hardware sensors such as LIDAR. In the past year, this effort has come to fruition, paving a path to a truly scalable live mapping of the world we live in. This funding round allows us to further grow this vision to help drivers drive safer and help cities turn digital. "

Erez Shachar, Managing Partner at Qumra Capital, said "We are excited by Nexar's vision to digitize the physical world and are impressed with the great strides it took in the past couple of years turning this vision into reality. We can't wait to see how Nexar's unique data network impacts the way all of us interact with and traverse the world around us."

About Nexar

Nexar turns cars into vision-sensors to understand the world. Its platform powers car vision connected services and apps, at scale, making new vision-based applications for better driving, powered by a crowd-sourced vision feed. Using anonymous, aggregated data captured from this network, Nexar has developed a portfolio of vision-based data services for public and private sector partners to make roadways safer and more efficient. Nexar's platform is already deployed across hundreds of thousands of cars, detecting parking spots, managing city safety and more.

More information at: data.getnexar.com

SOURCE Nexar

About State Farm Ventures, LLC

State Farm Ventures focuses on investing in startups developing technologies and products to fulfill customer needs in ways they may not expect from their insurance company. State Farm Ventures, LLC, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company.

“With over 100,000 homes currently using Ting, this round of funding enables Whisker Labs to serve hundreds of thousands more homes with Ting by the end of next year,” said Bob Marshall, Whisker Labs' Co-Founder and CEO.”

As insurance providers want to complement their homeowner offerings with more proactive solutions to improve safety and prevent claims, Ting identifies and alerts the homeowner through the monitoring service to the precise sources of electrical hazards that, left alone, could result in devastating home fires. Capturing and pinpointing fault signal data from inside the house or from local utility power - and certifying complete remediation of those faults – are key components of Ting’s turnkey service. The origins and types of faults Ting has identified are many.

“Part of our mission statement is to help people manage the risks of everyday life,” said Chris Schell, Senior Vice President-Property & Casualty, State Farm. “Funding for Whisker Labs aligns perfectly with that goal, helping our customers prevent and control losses in their own homes. As evidenced through the many accounts of how Ting has helped identify electrical issues before they cause losses in homes, our customers feel empowered to protect their families and possessions.”

"We appreciate our relationship with State Farm,” continued Marshall, “and we’re excited to continue our work with the insurance industry to accelerate the adoption of Ting's smart sensing and deep learning to deliver safety and peace of mind to customers.”

ABOUT WHISKER LABS

At Whisker Labs, our passion lies in solving hard problems with simple and elegant products that protect our customers and their homes by preventing fires. Winner of 2021 Best of the Smart Home Awards - Best Use of Machine Learning Category, Ting unlocks incredible insights into electrical anomalies in very fine detail, in real-time, from a single intelligent sensor. Ting's simplicity and high performance are born from decades of sensing, electromagnetic, and data science expertise. Ting is a turnkey subscription service to monitor and notify homeowners of electrical fire hazards using a DIY smart plug that takes 2 minutes to install. While on the lookout for electrical fire hazards within a home, Ting also monitors the quality of power delivered by electric utilities, identifying utility grid faults that can induce fires, damage appliances, and create electrocution risks inside the home. These same faults can also serve as an ignition source for devastating wildfires. 

About State Farm Ventures, LLC

State Farm Ventures focuses on investing in startups developing technologies and products to fulfill customer needs in ways they may not expect from their insurance company. State Farm Ventures, LLC, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company.

In 2020, Labs @State Farm began partnering with Whisker Labs and offering Ting devices to eligible customers in Arizona, California and Texas. As a result, over 40,000 devices were provided to customers resulting in numerous success stories and, in many cases, fire loss prevention. Some of these preventive detections included sensing clear arcing signals isolated to a chandelier in a master bathroom, identifying a missing neutral connection in a sub-panel, and detecting arcing signals consistent with water interaction with an electrical system.

What you need to know

We are now ready to expand the offering of Ting to more State Farm customers. Through 2021 and 2022, State Farm will begin offering an additional 100,000 Ting devices to non-tenant homeowner policyholders in more states. We will begin marketing to qualified policyholders in Ohio on May 18 (additional states and dates are yet to be determined, while Ting continues to be available in Arizona, California and Texas).

Qualified customers who enroll will receive:

• Free Ting sensor with mobile app access
• Pay no annual service fees for three years (fees paid by State Farm)
• Receive $1,000 credit toward remediation of electrical fire hazards (provided by Whisker Labs) 

Eligible policyholders will receive a targeted marketing email from their State Farm agent when the opportunity is available to participate in the Ting program.

“State Farm is committed to fire safety and providing customers the newest fire safety technology. We’re excited about the expansion of the Ting sensor program. Now, even more homeowners can have the peace of mind that they’re doing everything possible to protect one of their most valuable assets,” says Chris Schell, Senior Vice President – Property & Casualty. ““We have found our customers love how simple it is to install and really appreciate the app keeping them informed.”

How does Ting Work?

Ting monitors the electrical network of a home using a smart plug-in sensor to help detect hazards, so they can be fixed before they have a chance to ignite a fire. The main precursors to electrical fires, micro-arcs and sparks that develop, happen in faulty wires, loose connections and faulty appliances or devices. These signs usually develop over weeks and months, so Ting is designed to provide you with advanced warnings to address these hazards prior to the hazard starting an electrical fire.^[1] Check out this video on how Ting works.

Ting may also help detect electrical faults in the utility grid that could damage your home and potentially trigger wildfires.

"The Whisker Labs Ting team is very proud to support State Farm Insurance in this important initiative. We are committed to helping protect State Farm customers by monitoring the electricity that we all rely on for virtually everything in our lives today," said Bob Marshall, Co-Founder & CEO of Whisker Labs. “It is incredibly gratifying each time Ting helps identify an electrical fault, mitigate the hazard and prevent a fire from developing."

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

• Simple Insights Article
• Household Electrical Hazards
• Smart Home and Smart Grid: Whisker Labs Announces A Significant Milestone for Both

State Farm® is using technology to help homeowners better prepare and recover from the devastating impact of wildfires. These new tech tools - a sensor, an app, and your smartphone - places the power of preparation in the palm of consumers’ hands. Currently, 4.5 million U.S. homes are identified as being at high risk of wildfire. This makes the technology and wildfire preparation tools even more critical.

Ting

Ting is a plug-in device and smartphone app produced by Whisker Labs, a company specializing in fire safety using advanced technology to monitor electrical systems in the home and on the electrical utility grid.

The device is the size of a plug-in night light and can offer protection from electrical fires. Once plugged into a home electrical outlet, Ting is on the lookout for unique signals that are indicative of an electrical problem that could lead to a home fire. These signals can originate from loose connections, damaged wires or faulty devices and appliances, or from faults on the grid. If Ting detects anything unusual, it sends a notification to the customer’s mobile phone while also notifying the Whisker Labs’ monitoring center.

Electrical fires are responsible for originating 13% of all U.S. home fires, with an annual cost of $1.3 billion (National Fire Protection Association 2019 Survey). That’s an alarming statistic. While Ting can help detect electrical fire hazards in the home, it can also help detect wildfire ignition risks from the grid. The device can detect signals from malfunctions or fluctuations on the grid that indicate the risk of a fault or larger arcing event. A common example is electrical transformers that are typically installed outside the home to reduce the high-voltage supply from the grid into the low-voltage needed for a residence. When transformers work well, we don’t notice them. It’s a different story when they begin to experience issues and fail to operate correctly, or simply fail outright (Ting). These faults can cause safety issues, fire hazards, and damage to devices inside your home or produce sparks that could trigger a wildfire and potentially put other structures at risk.

Last summer, Whisker Labs helped launch a significant distribution program in partnership with State Farm. Eligible State Farm customers in Arizona, California, and Texas received Ting for free by simply enrolling online. In May, Whisker Labs announced 40,000 Ting devices had been distributed. Expansion to more customers in more states is planned in 2021.

IBHS Wildfire Ready App

Living in the era of apps, it is logical that the second new tool in a homeowners’ wildfire mitigation toolbox comes in app form. The Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) is one of the leading sources in the science of catastrophes. Leveraging their latest research, the goal of their new Wildfire Ready Virtual app is to help homeowners prepare their homes for a wildfire. The app uses augmented reality so that once you point your smartphone at your home, you can “see” the weak points. It also walks you through specific do-it-yourself (DIY) projects, including remodeling tips to make your home more fire resistant.

State Farm participated in the development of this app that you can download and try for yourself anytime (download for Apple or Android phones). Motivated to do even more? Check these extra wildfire protection tips in the IBHS Wildfire Ready Guide.

Home inventory

Unfortunately, there will be instances where despite preparation efforts, a wildfire may destroy your home. Recovering from such a devastating event is difficult but technology can help. This is where the third tech tool, your smartphone, takes center stage. A home inventory can show visual proof of what was in your home before it was damaged or destroyed. To this effect, the storytelling capabilities of today’s smartphones are a great ally.

A simple way to do a home inventory is to walk through each room of your home, taking pictures and videos of everything in it. Don’t forget to also step outside and take images of the structure and everything around it.

Let me introduce you to Mary. In this video she tells us the story of losing her home to a wildfire in Santa Barbara. No one better than her and her agent, Irene, to give us a home inventory 101.

So switch on these tech tools and take your wildfire safety to a whole new level.

“When startups find out I work for State Farm they’re surprised,” says Chan.

State Farm products insure where we live, how we travel, and cover life and wellness. If companies can help us continue to innovate in any of those strategic areas, Chan wants to speak with them.

“That eureka moment where I make the connection between a State Farm need and a solution from a startup is my favorite part of the job,” he adds.

“We are looking for products and services that we don’t currently have or technology that can enhance the products and services we currently offer,” says Mike Remmes, Innovation Executive in Labs @ State Farm. He’s also the architect of its State Farm Ventures, which focuses on research and development.

“We want to invest in companies that can help streamline our processes and operations or provide better services and products to our customers, now and into the future.”

However, venture capital waters are rough and unpredictable.

“Challenging conventional thinking is the point where innovation occurs,” explains Corey Schieler, Director of State Farm Ventures. What his team seeks is alignment between State Farm and startups.

That connection recently happened with a young firm called HopSkipDrive. The company specializes in transporting children to and from school. State Farm Ventures determined that the idea provides a valued service and peace of mind. In fact, it’s not just for customers facing transportation challenges for their children; there may be future alignment to customers with elderly parents facing similar mobility difficulties.

State Farm Ventures is a wholly owned subsidiary of State Farm. It launched in 2018 with a $100 million investment commitment and has already provided funding to nine companies.

“We try to find companies that are strategic to us. They must benefit our policyholders or advance the interests of State Farm. They must also provide a competitive advantage,” concludes Remmes.

Other investing examples include Cambridge Mobile Telematics. They provide State Farm with the technology behind Drive Safe & Save, our signature discount program. There's also the Whisker Labs' Ting device that can help mitigate or prevent house fire losses.

State Farm has been an innovative company since day one. Then, a farmer named George J. Mecherle decided to create an insurance company that more fairly matched risk to price.

As we approach our 100^th anniversary, the pursuit of innovation to better service customers remains our north star.

Pitching ideas to State Farm Ventures has never been easier thanks to the new State Farm Ventures website. To all entrepreneurs seeking funding: innovation is key, but khakis are not mandatory.