Motive Technologies sues rival Samsara over AI dashcam, fleet-management technology (updated)

Samsara (Pre-Reincorporation)

15/02/2024 20:45

(Update to include comment from Samsara)
    By Anna Tong
       SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 15 (Reuters) - Artificial
intelligence-powered fleet management company Motive
Technologies sued rival Samsara  IOTN.  Thursday, accusing
Samsara of copying its technology and patents in creating
competitive products such as an AI dashcam.
    Last month, Samsara filed a similar lawsuit against Motive
Technologies.
    The two companies, both based in San Francisco, provide
fleet-management products for the trucking, transportation and
logistics industry.
    "Samsara hasn’t been able to compete on the AI front. ...
Instead of building a better product, Samsara has resorted to
unlawful and anticompetitive business practices,” Motive CEO
Shoaib Makani said in an interview.
    Makani said Motive asked an outside third party, the
Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, to benchmark both AI
technologies side-by-side, and in the results Motive’s
technology detected 86% of unsafe driving behavior while
Samsara’s technology detected 21%.
    The lawsuit accuses Samsara leadership and employees of
creating over 30 fake customer accounts on its platform, and
copying features and AI capabilities to steal technology and
imitate its business.
    Motive said that Samsara poached the executive who developed
its AI Dashcam, and Samsara now plans to launch a similar
product copying Motive’s hardware design and supplier
relationships.
    Motive’s lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for
the Northern District of California. In 2022, Motive raised a
funding round that valued the company at $2.85 billion.
    A Samsara spokesperson in a statement called the
lawsuit "the same copycat tactic Motive uses for its product
development."
    "Rather than stopping its unlawful conduct, Motive has
decided to copy our claims," the Samsara spokesperson said.
    In January, Samsara filed a lawsuit against Motive in
federal court in Delaware, saying Motive employees accessed its
platform more than 20,000 times between 2018 and 2022. 
The complaint included a screenshot from a Samsara dashcam that
allegedly shows Makani and another executive studying its
technology. Samsara went public in 2021 with venture capital
backing from Andreessen Horowitz. 

 (Reporting by Anna Tong in San Francisco; editing by Jonathan
Oatis)
 ((anna.tong@thomsonreuters.com; Mob: +1-650-468-3913))