December 18, 2022
It is inevitable that the global automotive industry is going to transform in the coming years.
With the automotive artificial intelligence market set to hit $7.5 billion billion globally by 2028, we might no longer be driving our own cars on a day-to-day basis pretty soon.
The Vehicle as a Service industry will fundamentally change how we all view automotive ownership, and this market is anticipated to reach $30 billion globally by 2030.
While these stats are a drop in the ocean of the value of the global automotive manufacturing market, which was worth approximately $2.86 trillion in 2021, it is safe to say that there are an exponential amount of opportunities to enter the automotive industry.
In this list, 20 automotive startups are focused on that raised venture capital funding in 2022 and have the potential to alter how we experience automotives.
Headquarters: Columbus, Ohio, United States
Founders: Alex Timm, Dan Manges, Matt Armstead
Year founded: 2015
Latest funding: $300,000,000 (Post-IPO Debt)
Total funding: $827,500,000
Investors: Tiger Global Management, BlackRock, Silicon Valley Bank, Coatue, Ribbit Capital
What they do: Root Insurance is a property-casualty insurtech that offers personalized, affordable coverage in an app. Using technology in smartphones to measure driving behavior such as braking, speed of turns, driving times, and route regularity, Root determines who is a safe driver and who isn't. By only insuring safe drivers, Root can offer more affordable car insurance rates. Root also offers hassle-free and affordable app-based renters insurance, providing coverage that’s easy to understand and is personalized around real consumer needs.
Headquarters: New Delhi, Delhi, India
Founders: Saurav Kumar
Year founded: 2018
Latest funding: $58,899,068 (Series C)
Total funding: $91,992,735
Investors: Moglix, GIC, Athera Venture Partners, Sujeet Kumar, Blume Ventures
What they do: Euler Motors is an automotive tech startup based out of New Delhi focused on commercial electric vehicles. Inspired by the work done by EV Companies across the globe, Euler Motors is committed to accelerating India's transition to sustainable mobility. Euler aims to become the category leader for cargo transport by driving the Electric Vehicle Revolution in India. Euler Motors is focused on first solving last-mile logistics for e-commerce and 3PL players. To kickstart mass-market adoption - Euler is offering the entire "mobility as a service" stack instead of serving just one stage of a larger value-chain.
Headquarters: Beijing, Beijing, China
Founders: Jianchen Sun, Qiuhua Xu, Xingyu Du
Year founded: 2010
Latest funding: $15,000,000 (Post-IPO Equity)
Total funding: $129,196,000
Investors: K2VC, BAI capital, Highland Capital Partners, AlphaX Partners, Z-Park Fund
What they do: TuanChe is an omnichannel automotive marketplace in China. The company operates in one operating segment of providing auto shows, special promotion events services, virtual dealerships, online marketing services, and others. It organizes auto shows, which aim at facilitating transactions between consumers and auto dealers.
Headquarters: Ho Chi Minh City, NA - Vietnam, Vietnam
Founders: Son Nguyen
Year founded: 2021
Latest funding: $8,000,000 (Venture - Series Unknown)
Total funding: $15,900,000
Investors: GSR Ventures, Wavemaker Partners, InnoVen Capital, Delivery Hero Ventures, Hustle Fund
What they do: Dat Bike is a Vietnamese startup that makes electric motorbikes.
Headquarters: Aliso Viejo, California, United States
Founders: Donald McClymont, Ichiro Aoki, Scott Kee
Year founded: 2007
Latest funding: $140,000,000 (Post-IPO Debt)
Total funding: $322,500,075
Investors: Autotech Ventures
What they do: indie is empowering the Autotech revolution with next generation automotive semiconductors and software platforms. indie focuses on edge sensors for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems including LiDAR, connected car, user experience and electrification applications. These technologies represent the core underpinnings of both electric and autonomous vehicles, while the advanced user interfaces transform the in-cabin experience to mirror and seamlessly connect to the mobile platforms we rely on every day.
Headquarters: Orlando, Florida, United States
Founders: Austin Russell, Jason Eichenholz
Year founded: 2012
Latest funding: $20,250,000 (Post-IPO Equity)
Total funding: $1,015,750,000
Investors: Corning, 1517 Fund, Mercedes Benz, The Westly Group, Moore Capital
What they do: Luminar is a global automotive technology company ushering in a new era of vehicle safety and autonomy. For the past decade, Luminar has built an advanced hardware and software platform to enable its more than 50 industry partners, including the majority of global automotive OEMs. From Volvo Cars and Mercedes-Benz for consumer vehicles and Daimler Trucks for commercial trucks, to tech partners NVIDIA and Intel’s Mobileye, Luminar is poised to be the first automotive technology company to enable next-generation safety and autonomous capabilities for production vehicles.
Headquarters: San Francisco, California, United States
Founders: Christian Ohler, Erik Reis, George Arison, Joel Washington, Minnie Ingersoll, Morgan Knutson
Year founded: 2013
Latest funding: $20,000,000 (Post-IPO Debt)
Total funding: $504,000,000
Investors: Alumni Ventures, Fidelity Management and Research Company, Lithia Motors, DN Capital, SV Angel
What they do: Shift is an online marketplace for buying and selling used cars. Acting as a personal concierge service, the company details cars, lists them on multiple lists, handles test drives, and finds intent buyers. Charging a Shift Service Fee for registration, car prep services, and sales tax, Shift provides customers with a 150-point concierge report that includes specs, high-resolution photos, vehicle history, and results on their cars before purchase.
Headquarters: Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Founders: Beres Seelbach, Murat Günak, Philipp Kahle
Year founded: 2016
Latest funding: $15,727,754 (Debt Financing)
Total funding: $29,900,672
Investors: Zu na mi, European Innovation Council, Volkswagen Group, InnoEnergy, Proeza Ventures
What they do: ONO creates transformative change in urban mobility, making cities cleaner and more enjoyable. ONO first focuses on urban logistics, moving goods around the city in ways that are sustainable, efficient and cost-effective. ONO’s vehicle and its modular platform system, with easily swappable modular units, meet the needs of city logistics. From moving food to flowers to furniture, the possibilities are endless.
Headquarters: Stockholm, Stockholms Lan, Sweden
Founders: Carl-Magnus Norden, Kjell Walöen
Year founded: 2019
Latest funding: $61,865,874 (Series C)
Total funding: $390,857,651
Investors: Proterra, Luxor Capital Group, Agility, Waypoint Capital, Byggmästare A J Ahlström
What they do: Volta Trucks is an automotive company that offers electric trucks for sustainable cities. The company is building a purpose-built full-electric large commercial vehicle to be manufactured for inner-city freight and urban distribution.
Headquarters: Nairobi, Nairobi Area, Kenya
Founders: Jit Bhattacharya, Jonathan Green
Year founded: 2021
Latest funding: $6,600,000 (Seed)
Total funding: $10,970,261
Investors: Susquehanna International Group (SIG), My Climate Journey Collective, Climate Capital, Moxxie Ventures, Trucks Venture Capital
What they do: BasiGo is an e-mobility start-up looking to revolutionize the public transportation sector by providing public transport bus owners with a cost-effective electric alternative to diesel.
Headquarters: Miami, Florida, United States
Founders: Aharon Horwitz, Eliav Moshe, Yishai Goldstein
Year founded: 2016
Latest funding: $40,000,000 (Series C)
Total funding: $50,000,000
Investors: Aleph, Riverwood Capital, Target Global, PICO Venture Partners
What they do: AutoLeadStar is automotive's most trusted CDXP, Customer Data and Experience Platform, which unifies your first-party data and leverages it to create seamless omni-channel marketing campaigns that sell more cars with less cost. AutoLeadStar’s full-stack technology includes automating dealers digital advertising strategy, creating personalized on-site engagements, generating VIN-level marketing and streamlining data sources to reinvent the customer messaging in an ever-changing market reality. Used by several hundred dealerships, including many top 150 dealer groups, AutoLeadStar's CDXP is advancing the technology in this enormous segment of the economy.
Headquarters: Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China
Founders: Li Shufu, Ziyu Shen
Year founded: 2017
Latest funding: $65,000,000 (Convertible Note)
Total funding: $504,323,889
Investors: Luminar, Geely, Baidu, SPDB International Holdings, Lotus Technology
What they do: ECARX is a global mobility tech company that develops an automotive computing platform. Its products include infotainment head units (IHU), digital cockpits, vehicle chip-set solutions, a core operating system, and an integrated software stack. It rapidly advances technology to shape the interaction between people and cars. The company was founded in 2017 with facilities in China and Europe.
Headquarters: Nijmegen, Gelderland, The Netherlands
Founders: Xuezheng Zhang
Year founded: 2016
Latest funding: $14,927,155 (Series A)
Total funding: $814,927,155
Investors: Road Capital, Share VC, Camel Ventures
What they do: Nexperia is a dedicated global leader in Discretes, Logic and MOSFETs devices. They are a new company with a long history, broad experience and a global customer base. Originally part of Philips, Nexperia became a business unit of NXP before becoming an independent company at the beginning of 2017. Nexperia’s focus remains on efficiency, producing consistently reliable semiconductor components at high volume: 85 billion annually. They have an extensive portfolio, produced to meet the stringent standards set by the Automotive industry. Their industry-leading small packages, produced in-house, combine power and thermal efficiency with best-in-class quality levels. Alongside efficiency and quality, Nexperia customers value reliability and a consistent supply they can trust. Their manufacturing facilities (two front-end, three back-end) are fully vertically integrated to deliver optimized high-volume production. They offer the highest capacity in the industry for various packages, and continuously invest in new capacities.
Headquarters: New York, New York, United States
Founders: Alexander Isaacson, Nikhil Bharadwaj
Year founded: 2019
Latest funding: $40,000,000 (Series B)
Total funding: $61,000,000
Investors: Bridge Bank, Moderne Ventures, ArcTern Ventures, WIND Ventures, Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator
What they do: Xeal provides EV charging solutions for apartments, condos, and workplaces. Xeal offers charging solutions from installation, and cloud-based EV charging management solutions to mobile applications for apartments, condos, and workplaces. Its mobile application provides features to find, track, and reserve the charging points, thereby allowing users to charge their cars from anywhere and for property owners to earn passive income and cut CO2 emissions.
Headquarters: Munich, Bayern, Germany
Founders: Andreas Wixler, Hans-Peter Ringer, Max-Josef Meier, Maximilian Wühr, Nikolai Schröder
Year founded: 2019
Latest funding: $110,000,000 (Series B)
Total funding: $908,256,372
Investors: Credit Suisse, Heliad Equity Partners, White Star Capital, Heartcore Capital, Picus Capital
What they do: FINN offers monthly car subscriptions to create a sustainable method for mobility. Its mission is to make mobility fun and sustainable: FINN helps everyone who loves driving their own car but refuses the struggle, commitment and intransparent costs associated with car ownership.
Headquarters: Budapest, Budapest, Hungary
Founders: Laszlo Kishonti
Year founded: 2015
Latest funding: $20,000,000 (Series C)
Total funding: $67,641,868
Investors: Draper Associates, Inventure, Day One Capital, Cisco Investments, B Capital Group
What they do: Developing self-driving software, proprietary simulation tools and neural network acceleration hardware IP, AImotive is building an ecosystem to aid the deployment of automated driving. To catalyse industry collaboration, AImotive’s products are scalable, modular and hardware agnostic. AImotive builds on their team’s expertise in artificial intelligence, sensor fusion, 3D graphics and real-world automated driving workloads, to support their partners in realizing their self-driving goals.
Headquarters: Bangalore, Karnataka, India
Founders: Dinkar Agrawal, Madhumita Agrawal
Year founded: 2020
Latest funding: $3,921,518 (Seed)
Total funding: $5,921,518
Investors: US India EV Angels, Dholakia Ventures, We Founder Circle, Gaurav Juneja, Shajikumar Devakar
What they do: Oben Electric Vehicles is an electric two-wheeler manufacturing company in Bangalore, India, that is committed to designing, developing, and manufacturing electric two-wheelers indigenously. Oben Electric is focused on bringing reliable, safe, and qualitative electric two-wheelers to the consumer segments of the world that are at par with conventional two-wheelers. Its first flagship product and performance motorcycle ‘Rorr’ proudly envisages India’s ‘Make in India’ and ‘Atmanirbhar’ program of the Indian Government.
Headquarters: Helmond, Noord-Brabant, The Netherlands
Founders: Arjo van der Ham, Koen van Ham, Lex Hoefsloot, Martijn Lammers, Qurein Biewenga
Year founded: 2016
Latest funding: $80,165,715 (Venture - Series Unknown)
Total funding: $183,821,717
Investors: Koenigsegg Automotibe, FAST — by GETTYLAB, BOM, Invest-NL, DELA
What they do: Lightyear, an international team of 90 engineers including triple winners of the World Solar Challenge, experienced engineers from the aerospace, racing and automotive industry (e.g. ASML, Tesla, Ferrari and Inalfa) and alumni of the Eindhoven University of Technology, develops the first commercially available electric solar car in the world that charges itself: the Lightyear One.
Headquarters: Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Founders: Chris Baker, Debbie Yu, Yibiao Zhao
Year founded: 2017
Latest funding: $40,000,000 (Series B)
Total funding: $57,736,986
Investors: Eniac Ventures, Founders Fund, Hyperplane Venture Capital, Maersk Growth, Cherubic Ventures
What they do: ISEE is an autonomous driving technology company building advanced AI to modernize the global supply chain. ISEE autonomous yard trucks are helping customers like Maersk, Lazerspot, and Fortune 100 retail companies automate their logistics hubs and achieve even greater yard safety, cost savings, consistent driving performance, and reliable driving capacity. ISEE has proprietary technology that anticipates unexpected behavior better than any other solution on the market.
Headquarters: Santa Clara, California, United States
Founders: Casey Morrison, Jitendra Mohan, Sanjay Gajendra
Year founded: 2017
Latest funding: $150,000,000 (Series D)
Total funding: $206,350,000
Investors: Fidelity Management and Research Company, Valor Equity Partners, Sutter Hill Ventures, Intel Capital, Avigdor Willenz
What they do: Astera Labs is a fabless semiconductor company headquartered in the heart of California’s Silicon Valley and is a leader in purpose-built connectivity solutions for data-centric systems. The company’s product portfolio includes system-aware semiconductor integrated circuits, boards, and services to enable robust PCIe connectivity. Partnering with leading processor vendors, cloud service providers, seasoned investors, and world-class manufacturing companies, Astera Labs is helping customers remove performance bottlenecks in compute-intensive workloads. Established in 2017 by Jitendra Mohan and is based in Santa Clara, California, United States.
Automotive startups are set to revolutionize the industry. From making automotive usage more sustainable to increasing the integration of artificial intelligence into how we drive, investment in this industry will undoubtedly transform our daily lives.
Don’t forget about the top automotive startups mentioned in this list - without a doubt, you will see them at the forefront of the latest developments in the automotive industry.
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