Skip to main content
Jaguar Land Rover's headquarters are in Coventry, England, not far from Birmingham. But since 2013, the maker of sleek sports cars and rugged SUVs has called Portland a home away from home.
The British Automaker quickly established a presence at its Pearl District facility, hiring engineers and others to develop technologies for the car of the future.
This morning, JLR announced its next Portland effort: the first class of startups it will fund at its incubator facility on Northwest 18th Avenue, three blocks from its existing JLR Open Software Technology Center.
It's the start of a ten-year tech development project for the automaker.
Two of the three participating firms—Urban.Systems and BabyBit—are based in Portland with roots at Intel and have no direct connection to autos.
The third, Houston's Parkit, offers camera-based real-time parking data. The idea is to build an in-car feature that helps drivers find available parking spots.
All companies will get cash, office space, access to engineers and other mentors.
"Locating our facility in Portland gives us closer access to the creative talent of the world's leading IT and consumer electronics businesses on the West Coast and will help us influence the technological direction these companies are taking," Matt Jones, director of future technology at JLR, tells WW. "The creativity of the developers and engineers, and the healthy ecosystem for start-ups made it an easy choice as a location."
Urban.Systems was co founded by Wilfred Pinfold, who worked for Intel since the early 1990s. The company seeks to harness data for sustainable cities and urban development. The firm will aggregate electric vehicle services and products for cities, according to JLR.
BabyBit, was also born here in Portland and founded by Brian Ostrovsky, an Intel vet who got his start with the tech giant in 2001. His startup offers wearable devices that can be used to track a toddler's location, body position and temperature.
Each startup will have two to six staffers working out of the JLR incubator location, which currently has space for about 30 people. Looking ahead, JLR expects to add 60 or more desks in the next three months to the facility, also home to a small JLR team of around six people.
"Importantly the success criteria for the incubator is healthy, growing companies," said Jones. "We intend to assist in any way possible to make each and every company that joins the incubator a success."
Jaguar's announcement gives a boost to the Portland incubator scene, an environment that has been dominated by the Portland Incubator Experiment (PIE), which late last year announced that it was shutting down its accelerator.
Willamette Week