Life360 is getting out of the business of selling precise user location data

Image: Google

The data sales business of Life360 is being scaled back to just two partners: Allstate Arity and Placer.ai. The company announced a deal to acquire the item tracker Tile in November and a December report from The Markup said Life360 was the source of precise location data to as many as a dozen data brokers. Sources within the industry called Life360 one of the largest sources of data.

Chris Hulls, the CEO, said that the company had about 30 million active users and that it brought in about $16 million in data sales in 2020. The partnership with Allstate Arity made up $6 million of the total revenue for the year. The company reported 42 percent revenue growth for the year, which included the previous data collection business contracts.

Life360 was one of the multibillion-dollar location data industry’s largest raw data sources.



Now, it says it’ll instead sell aggregated user data to one location data firm: Placer․ai.@alfredwkng and @jonkeegan break down the scope of this change.https://t.co/g8iIDQ2o9L

— The Markup (@themarkup) January 27, 2022

The company says that it is the beginning of its exit from the traditional data broker business with the new data collection deal with Placer.ai. The quarterly activity report was released yesterday.

With this agreement, Placer.ai will provide critical data insights and analytics services to Life360, which will enhance the product experience for our users. As part of this partnership, Placer will have the right to commercialise solely aggregated data related to places visits during the term of the agreement. We have begun terminating our relationships with all other location data partners with the exception of Allstate/Arity, which will continue.

Life360 recognises that aggregated data analytics (for example, 150 people drove by the supermarket) is the wave of the future and that businesses will increasingly place a premium on data insights that do not rely on device-level or other individual user-level identifiers. As a result, we believe this partnership will enable us to spend less time navigating the rapidly evolving regulatory and platform environment, while simultaneously reducing business risk.

This agreement includes a minimum revenue guarantee based on the size of Life360’s active user base, which we expect will preserve revenue in-line with CY21 results for the duration of the three-year agreement. Life360 will also be receiving a 10 year warrant exercisable to purchase up to US$25m in Placer.ai, which recently completed a US$100m capital raise. The agreement also expressly excludes

Tile and Jiobit device data to underscore our clear message that data from Tile and Jiobit devices is not, and will never be, sold or monetised.”

In December, we asked Chris Hulls, the CEO of Life360, what his company would do if its partners, like X-mode or Cuebiq, sold identifiable data to the government.

There are two exceptions to the scaling back of location tracking. The G-forces of an accident, how fast the device in a car is traveling, and the location of the crash would all need to be accounted for by the insurer. It's not clear how the trip information will be used for data insights other than driver safety.

User participation in sharing their aggregated data to Placer.ai is optional, however, it will remain as an opt-out action in the app's settings.