Who We Are
CMT’s story begins at MIT
In 2004, Hari Balakrishnan and Sam Madden started the CarTel project at MIT, developing a mobile sensing system to collect and draw inferences from sensor data on mobile devices. The following years, they partnered with Boston taxi companies to accurately measure traffic surface conditions and traffic using award-winning new methods for mobile telematics. This research won multiple “best paper” and “test of time” awards from the top research conferences in Computer Science. In 2010, building on their academic success, they started Cambridge Mobile Telematics with Bill Powers.

Cambridge Mobile Telematics (CMT) is the world’s largest telematics service provider. Its mission is to make the world’s roads and drivers safer. The company’s AI-driven platform, DriveWell®, gathers sensor data from millions of IoT devices — including smartphones, proprietary Tags, connected vehicles, dashcams, and third-party devices — and fuses them with contextual data to create a unified view of vehicle and driver behavior. Companies from personal and commercial auto insurance, automotive, rideshare, smart cities, wireless, financial services, and family safety industries use insights from CMT’s platform to power their risk assessment, safety, claims, and driver improvement programs. Headquartered in Cambridge, MA, with offices in Budapest, Chennai, Seattle, Tokyo, and Zagreb, CMT serves millions of people through over 95 programs in 25 countries, including 21 of the top 25 US auto insurers.
Our Leadership

Founder & Chief Technology Officer

Founder & Chief Executive Officer

Founder & Chief Scientist

Chief Operating Officer
Our History

Spun off from MIT CarTel project
MIT professors Hari Balakrishnan and Sam Madden paired their research with business and partnered with Bill Powers to start Cambridge Mobile Telematics.

Launched first mobile, usage-based insurance product
CMT deployed the first service to efficiently gather and process sensory data from phones for auto insurance.

Started tracking phone distraction
Began using phone sensors to measure phone distraction.

Contest-based gamification
Added gamification features to the DriveWell platform to induce better driving.

Invented the DriveWell Tag
Launched the first fully wireless “Internet of Things” (IoT) device to measure driving behavior.

Live impact alerts
Deployed the first and only mobile-centric impact detection and alerting system.

Fleet safety
The DriveWell fleet program provides critical insights on driver behavior and vehicle location to commercial insurers and fleet managers.

Crash reconstruction
Important crash information visualized for the insurer’s review, simplifying the claims process for all.

Actuarial scoring
Our Premium Score gets regulatory approval in 49 states and counting.