Ask Cambridge Mobile Telematics cofounder Hari Balakrishnan about the $500 million his business raised from SoftBank’s Vision Fund and he’ll bring up two bigger numbers: 1.2 billion and 875 million.

The first is an estimate of the number of vehicles globally. The second is the number of insurance policies on those vehicles.

Then there’s a smaller number: 50 million—Balakrishnan’s estimate for how many insurance policies cover vehicles that use a telematic, or vehicle data, system—like the one that his company makes—that tells the driver and the insurer how the policyholder is driving.

“It’s about getting to those 1.2 billion vehicles,” says Balakrishnan, who also serves as the company’s chairman and chief technology officer. “We want to bridge that, and we want to be front-and-center in this rapidly evolving mobility sector.”

Cambridge Mobile Telematics (CMT) yesterday announced Japan-based Softbank’s massive $100 billion growth-stage Vision Fund was investing $500 million into the driving-data company, whose DriveWell products are used by automotive and commercial insurers, companies with vehicle fleets, and also cities that promote safer driving through “safest driver” contests it runs with the Vision Zero traffic safety project.

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