The data was always there

In June 2026, SOFICO acquired Vinli, the team building our agentic fleet intelligence. This is their story, in their own words. By Matt Himelfarb & Ray Hernandez.
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Sofico
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Published
14/07/2026

The data was always there

We began in 2014 with a small device that fit in your hand and plugged into the OBD port of a car. It pulled out diagnostic data, engine signals, vehicle behavior. Things the car had been generating and discarding for years. The bet was simple: every vehicle on the road was sitting on a pile of unused intelligence, and the companies that figured out how to act on it were going to win the next era of mobility.  

Twelve years later, that’s still the bet. The technology around it finally caught up.  

We launched as a consumer hardware company. Inside a year, it became obvious the people who needed this most weren’t drivers. They were operators. Insurers, leasing companies, OEMs, fleet managers. The companies whose entire P&L depended on what millions of vehicles were doing every minute of every day, and who almost never knew.  

So we built a data platform that takes data from any source, OEM connectivity programs, aftermarket telematics, OBD devices, plate readers, payment systems, and turns it into something a business can actually use. It became the operational layer behind some of the most demanding mobility programs in the industry. It was the platform. We knew it wasn’t the finish line.  

Then AI got serious

In October 2025 we launched Velona. An agentic AI fleet manager. The clearest expression of the original bet we’ve ever shipped. 
 

Velona is what happens when the data finally gets a workforce. 
 

Specialized agents work every night on operational data and surface specific, financially quantified actions. Not dashboards. Not chatbots. Not summaries. Findings like “Vehicle 4471 has lost approximately $3,200 to idle time this quarter. Recommended action: reassign to short-route duty.” With an asset ID. With a dollar amount. With the next step. Today, a human reviews and approves before action is taken. The agents will keep getting more capable. The trust they earn will keep expanding what they’re allowed to do.  

The architecture matters as much as the output. Analyst agents detect patterns and quantify financial impact. Persona agents interpret those findings through the real-world constraints of the role receiving them, whether that’s a fleet manager, a CFO, a safety director, or a procurement lead. A validator layer fact-checks every recommendation before it surfaces.  

What Velona showed us next was where the ceiling was. To take this from individual fleets to every contract and every vehicle in the global automotive finance and leasing ecosystem, we needed a platform already sitting at the center of that world.  

That platform is SOFICO Miles Enterprise.  

Why SOFICO

For more than 35 years, SOFICO has built the operational backbone of automotive finance and leasing. More than 40 customers in 27 countries. Over 5 million contracts under management. Roughly $100 billion in contract value. Miles is the system of record for the global leasing industry.  

What’s been missing from that ecosystem is not more data. It’s a layer that turns the data already inside Miles into decisions. Contract data, residual value signals, operational patterns. All of it sitting there, waiting for something to act on it.  

That is what Velona does That is why we’re joining SOFICO

Together, Miles and Velona become the foundation of something neither company could build alone: a platform that doesn’t just manage the contract lifecycle but understands it.  

The first thing we’re building together is contract intelligence for leasing companies. Picture a portfolio manager opening Miles and finding a flagged contract: vehicle running well over expected operating cost for its segment, residual exposure projected into the high six figures, a renegotiation path already drafted for review. From there, more. Every layer we’ve spent twelve years learning how to build, pointed at the scale SOFICO operates at.  

The data was always there. Now we’re building what acts on it.