Home insurance startup Luko raises $22 million for AI that reduces domestic accidents

Luko, a France-based insurance tech startup that's using sensors, data, and machine learning to circumvent the need to make a claim in the first place, has raised €20 million ($22 million) in a series A round of funding led by Silicon Valley VC heavyweight Accel, with participation from Peter Thiel's Founders Fund and Europe's Speedinvest. Founded out of Paris in 2016, Luko offers a similar proposition to other modern, mobile-focused insurance companies such as New York-based Lemonade, insofar it promises to provide quick coverage with minimal friction. The company said that it takes just two minutes to secure coverage, two hours to receive payment for a claim, and two days for any damage to be repaired. But the company is going further than that, by trying to detect issues before they escalate -- Luko is pitching its product as a means to move away from a "reactive" claims-based model to one of prevention. "This is the first step to our true endgame -- avoiding home accidents altogether," Luko cofounder and CEO Raphael Vullierme said.