Autonomous autos are having a second, and it’s making it so much simpler for smaller corporations to lift cash. Vay, a German startup providing remote-controlled rental vehicles, will get $60 million in money from Singaporean tech heavyweight Grab, the corporate introduced on Monday.
The deal, which is topic to regulatory approval and anticipated to shut by the top of the 12 months, could also be adopted by “a further $350M as joint milestones are achieved throughout the first 12 months,” Vay CEO Thomas von der Ohe wrote on LinkedIn.
The Berlin-based startup makes use of its expertise and human operators to remotely drive rental vehicles to and from clients. Vay isn’t but commercially deployed in real traffic in Germany, the place it lacked regulatory readability until recently, however the firm is at the moment operational in Las Vegas, the place it in January 2024. Vay now plans to make use of Seize’s investments to scale and increase its operations within the U.S.
Vay might want to hit sure milestones within the US to unlock extra funding from Seize, together with variety of U.S. cities lined, regulatory approvals obtained, and total shopper income.
The U.S. is seeing elevated competitors and fast-expanding choices of assorted types of distant driving. For example, Alphabet-owned Waymo just lately introduced it might deploy its robotaxi service in Detroit, Las Vegas, and San Diego.
Though publicly traded on the Nasdaq, Seize doesn’t function within the U.S., the place it would restrict itself to supporting Vay’s progress.
Nonetheless, Vay describes driverless automobile rental as complementary to robotaxis. As for Seize, it sees Vay as serving “a rising phase of shoppers preferring to not be automobile homeowners,” Seize cofounder and CEO Anthony Tan stated in a press release.
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Vay’s clients might not be automobile homeowners, however they nonetheless want a driving license: as soon as the automobile will get delivered, the person takes over and drives it like an everyday automobile. However in contrast to their very own automobile, they don’t want to seek out the place to park it. Vay says its service prices about half the value of ride-hailing, because of this hybrid strategy and hardware-light system.
On the similar time, the 2 corporations plan to discover synergies between Vay’s and Seize’s enterprise in Southeast Asia. Calling itself “the on a regular basis every part app,” Seize’s ubiquitous super-app gives all-in-one taxi, trip hailing, transport, specific grocery buying and meals supply choices, in addition to digital funds and monetary providers.
With a rising curiosity in mobility, Seize just lately invested in autonomous driving tech startups together with May Mobility out of the U.S. and WeRide out of China. The synergies it finds with Vay could be on the tech aspect — as an illustration, it stated that driving knowledge collected by Vay may speed up the coaching of AI fashions to enhance autonomous driving.
This additionally aligns with Vay’s imaginative and prescient to grow to be greater than an electrical rental automobile fleet. The corporate has already expanded into industrial and business-to-business providers, and closed a partnership with self-driving truck firm Kodiak Robotics. Finally, it goals to construct a “international distant driving platform,” von der Ohe instructed TechCrunch earlier this 12 months.
In line with Crunchbase, Vay had raised $131.8 million from backers together with Kinnevik, Coatue, Eurazeo, Atomico, Basic Catalyst, Creandum, and the European Funding Financial institution. If absolutely unlocked, Seize’s funding could be a major turbo. However with Nvidia asserting plans to speculate $500 million into British self-driving tech startup Wayve, the race is simply beginning.
