“Can a telematics/IoT company become the operating system for every physical-economy business — with financing, insurance data, and fuel spend as adjacent monetization layers?”
Samsara was founded in 2015 by the Meraki founders (post-Cisco acquisition) as a fleet telematics hardware+software company. It expanded from vehicle gateways into AI dash cams, equipment tracking, site security, and worker safety — repositioning as a 'Connected Operations Platform' for the physical economy. IPO'd on NYSE (IOT) in December 2021. Embedded finance is a peripheral, not core, motion — the company operates Samsara Capital Finance to finance its own hardware/software bundles, and its Marketplace surfaces third-party fuel cards (Coast, WEX, FLEETCOR, EFS) and insurtech data integrations rather than issuing financial products itself.
Samsara processes payments through Stripe.
Samsara uses footprint for KYC and identity verification.
Samsara's lending and capital products are provided by Samsara Capital Finance (in-house).
Samsara integrates with QuickBooks.
The Embedded Finance Index 2026 maps 4 layers in Samsara's stack: Payments / PSP (Stripe); Lending (Samsara Capital Finance (in-house) and Samsara Capital Finance — monthly/quarterly/annual financing for Samsara hardware + software bundles); KYC (footprint); Accounting (QuickBooks).
Samsara was founded by Sanjit Biswas and John Bicket and is founded in 2015, headquartered in San Francisco, CA, USA.
Get a read on where your own stack stands against Samsara and the rest of its category — what they built versus bought, which providers they use, and where the gaps in your own strategy and competitive set actually are.