By Matt Day, The Seattle Times
Microsoft has scooped up Mobile Data Labs, the maker of the MileIQ mileage-tracking app.
Mobile Data Labs’ smartphone application logs the distance that users drive, storing the data online for independent contractors, real estate agents and other workers who need to report auto mileage to employers. The San Francisco company had raised about $15.1 million in venture capital funding since its 2013 founding, according to CrunchBase.
Microsoft didn’t disclose the financial terms of the acquisition.
Mobile Data Labs joins a growing roster of mobile application startups that Microsoft has acquired in the past year in an effort to bolster its presence on mobile devices. The Redmond, Wash., company has targeted companies that make products like calendars, checklists and email services for Google- and Apple-powered smartphones.
That’s a shift for Microsoft, which a few years ago would probably not have been on Mobile Data Labs’ wish list of potential suitors, said Karan Mehandru, a partner with Silicon Valley venture capital firm Trinity Ventures, an investor in the startup. “There’s a lot that has changed since [Chief Executive Satya Nadella] has taken the helm.”
At a meeting as the two companies were discussing a potential deal, Nadella and Mobile Data Labs Chief Executive Chuck Dietrich “were almost completing each others’ sentences,” said Mehandru, who was a member of the startup’s board.
“Microsoft came in and pitched this idea of where they want to go with mobile productivity,” Mehandru said. “Just having [Nadella] talk about what he wants to do with Microsoft over the next 10, 15 years, that got people excited.”
©2015 The Seattle Times Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
