Tag: Transportation

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SoftBank invests in parking startup ParkJockey pushing valuation to $1 billion

SoftBank continues to invest in the future of transportation — this time in ParkJockey, a startup that has built a technology platform aimed at monetizing parking lots. And ParkJockey, which was founded in 2013, is already using that capital to scale up.

Along with the SoftBank investment news, ParkJockey also announced that it was acquiring two of the largest parking operators in North America. The startup, with help from Abu Dhabi-based Mubadala Capital and debt financing from Owl Rock, said it had reached an agreement to acquire Imperial Parking Corporation, a North American-based parking management company often referred to as Impark. The agreement follows ParkJockey’s acquisition of parking management operator Citizens Parking Inc.

The investment puts the ParkJockey valuation to more than $1 billion, reported Miami Herald.

Miami-based ParkJockey developed a parking management platform that helps commercial property owners better monetize parking lots as well as handle operations at large venues and stadiums. The company’s platform offers features like automatic license plate recognition and pay-by-app, among others.  The company’s app also can be used by drivers to find parking spaces more efficiently.

Financial terms of the SoftBank investment or the acquisitions weren’t disclosed. The announcement follows an Axios article last week that reported SoftBank was backing the startup.

The Impark transaction is subject to regulatory approvals. The acquisition is expected to close in the first half of 2019, ParkJockey said. 

SoftBank’s investment in parking might seem rather, well, pedestrian. It’s actually a bet on an automated future from present-day parking management issues like electric vehicle charging, designated areas for ride-hailing and automatic pay, as well as a day when vehicles are fully autonomous.

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Electric scooter startup Spin is finalizing a $125 million security token offering

Spin, an electric scooter startup, is raising around $125 million via a blockchain-based security token offering (STO), TechCrunch has learned. Spin, which declined to comment for this story, has previously raised just $8 million.

The idea with Spin’s security token offering is to raise money from accredited investors, who will then be entitled to a portion of the revenue from Spin’s electric scooter operations, according to a source close to Spin. Last year, initial coin offerings were the hot thing in the cryptocurrency space. Now, STOs are starting to emerge, given that they provide more security for potential investors. With STOs, investors can buy tokens that are linked to real-world financial instruments. In the case of Spin’s offering, the tokens are linked to its revenue.

Spin has been one of the more quiet scooter startups in the industry after announcing its expansion into scooters in February.This comes shortly after electric scooter startup Bird raised a $300 million round led by Sequoia Capital, and after reports of Lime raising $250 million led by GV.

Spin currently has a contract with electric scooter manufacturer Ninebot to purchase 30,000 scooters a month through the end of this year, according to a source. Bird, on the other hand, said in May it inked an exclusive deal with Ninebot for rights to the company’s supply of scooters. Clearly, that’s not true.

Spin had previously only operated a bike-share platform. Last August, Spin brought its stationless bike-share program to South San Francisco after launching in Seattle earlier that year. Then, in January, Spin unveiled its stationless electric bike. However, Spin now solely focused on electric scooters, according to a source close to Spin.

Meanwhile, Spin and other electric scooter operators are currently awaiting to get word from the city of San Francisco regarding whether or not they can deploy their respective scooters in the city.

Uber and Lyft apply for electric scooter permits in SF

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Uber appoints Rachel Holt as head of new modalities

Uber is racing ahead to become the go-to multi-modal transportation service. On the heels of a multimillion-dollar acquisition of JUMP bikes, the launch of UberRENT, its permit application to deploy electric scooters in San Francisco and a partnership with public transit company Masabi, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has tapped Rachel Holt to lead the company’s New Modalities organization.

As head of new modalities, Holt will be responsible for the ramp-up and onboarding of additional mobility services — be that public transit integration, scooters, car rentals, bikes and whatever else Uber has up its sleeves. That means she’ll also work closely with JUMP CEO Ryan Rzepecki.

“I’m excited to bring my learnings and experiences scaling Uber’s rides business to bear as we incubate and build new ways to move around the more than 600 cities we serve,” Holt said in an emailed statement to TechCrunch.

Holt has worked at Uber since October 2011, when the company was live in just three cities. In May 2016, she became VP and regional general manager of Uber’s operations in the U.S. and Canada.

The move signals the seriousness of Uber’s efforts to expand beyond traditional ride-sharing, and even autonomous ride-sharing. Khosrowshahi has repeatedly voiced his intent for Uber to become a multi-modal transportation company, so the creating of a new department is not all that surprising. And as Uber gets closer to its 2019 initial public offering, the company is clearly trying to highlight its variety of potential revenue streams.

Uber CEO outlines mobility plans

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Bird has officially raised a whopping $300M as the scooter wars heat up

And there we have it: Bird, one of the emerging massively hyped Scooter startups, has roped in its next pile of funding by picking up another $300 million in a round led by Sequoia Capital.

The company announced the long-anticipated round this morning, with Sequoia’s Roelof Botha joining the company’s board of directors. This is the second round of funding that Bird has raised over the span of a few months, sending it from a reported $1 billion valuation in May to a $2 billion valuation by the end of June. In March, the company had a $300 million valuation, but the Scooter hype train has officially hit a pretty impressive inflection point as investors pile on to get money into what many consider to be the next iteration of resolving transportation at an even more granular level than cars or bikes. New investors in the round include Accel, B Capital, CRV, Sound Ventures, Greycroft and e.ventures; previous investors Craft Ventures, Index Ventures, Valor, Goldcrest, Tusk Ventures and Upfront Ventures are also in the round. (So, basically everyone else who isn’t in competitor Lime.)

Scooter mania has captured the hearts of Silicon Valley and investors in general — including Paige Craig, who actually jumped from VC to join Bird as its VP of business — with a large amount of capital flowing into the area about as quickly as it possibly can. These sort of revolving-door fundraising processes are not entirely uncommon, especially for very hot areas of investment, though the scooter scene has exploded considerably faster than most. Bird’s round comes amid reports of a mega-round for Lime, one of its competitors, with the company reportedly raising another $250 million led by GV, and Skip also raising $25 million.

“We have met with over 20 companies focused on the last-mile problem over the years and feel this is a multi-billion dollar opportunity that can have a big impact in the world,” CRV’s Saar Gur, who did the deal for the firm, said. “We have a ton of conviction that this team has original product thought (they created the space) and the execution chops to build something extremely valuable here. And we have been long-term focused, not short-term focused, in making the investment. The ‘hype’ in our decision (the non-zero answer) is that Bird has built the best product in the market and while we kept meeting with more startups wanting to invest in the space — we kept coming back to Bird as the best company. So in that sense, the hype from consumers is real and was a part of the decision. On unit economics: We view the first product as an MVP (as the company is less than a year old) — and while the unit economics are encouraging, they played a part of the investment decision but we know it is not even the first inning in this market.”

There’s certainly an argument to be made for Bird, whose scooters you’ll see pretty much all over the place in cities like Los Angeles. For trips that are just a few miles down wide roads or sidewalks, where you aren’t likely to run into anyone, a quick scan of a code and a hop on a Bird may be worth the few bucks in order to save a few minutes crossing those considerably long blocks. Users can grab a bird that they see and start going right away if they are running late, and it does potentially alleviate the pressure of calling a car for short distances in traffic, where a scooter may actually make more sense physically to get from point A to point B than a car.

There are some considerable hurdles going forward, both theoretical and in effect. In San Francisco, though just a small slice of the United States metropolitan area population, the company is facing significant pushback from the local government, and scooters for the time being have been kicked off the sidewalks. There’s also the looming shadow of what may happen regarding changes in tariffs, though Gur said that it likely wouldn’t be an issue and “the unit economics appear to be viable even if tariffs were to be added to the cost of the scooters.” (Xiaomi is one of the suppliers for Bird, for example.)

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Self-driving car startup Nuro teams up with Kroger for same-day grocery delivery

Nuro, an autonomous vehicle startup focused on local deliveries, has partnered with 135-year-old grocery retailer Kroger to offer same-day deliveries. The two have yet to announce which market this will be live in, but the plan is to launch the several-month-long pilot this fall.

Nuro’s intent is to use its self-driving technology in the last mile for the delivery of local goods and services. That could be things like groceries, dry cleaning, an item you left at a friends house or really anything within city limits that can fit inside one of Nuro’s vehicles. Nuro has two compartments that can fit up to six grocery bags each.

When it came to going to market, Nuro CEO Dave Ferguson told me groceries were most exciting to him. And Kroger particularly stood out because of its smart shelf technology and partnership Ocado around automated fulfillment centers.

“With the pilot, we’re excited about getting more experience interacting with real customers and understanding exactly what they want,” Ferguson said. “The things they love about it, the things they don’t love as much. As an organization for us, it’s also very valuable for us to have to exercise our operational muscle.”

Throughout the pilot program, Nuro will be looking to see how accurate its estimated delivery times are, how the public reacts to the vehicles and how regular, basic cars interact with self-driving ones.

The pilot will be live in just one market, but Kroger has 2,800 stores nationwide so Nuro sees the partnership as an opportunity to reach the vast majority of America. Kroger already offers same-day delivery to 75 percent of its customers. With Nuro on board, the idea is to deploy the self-driving cars in areas where Kroger has yet to offer delivery services.

“We want to be available to every single customer of ours,” Kroger Chief Digital Officer Yael Cosset told TechCrunch.

On the customer side, the experience will surely be different from what they’re used to. Currently, Kroger customers expect the grocery delivery drivers to bring their items to their front door. With Nuro’s vehicles, they’ll only go as far as curbside.

“This is an area where we’re going to learn a lot from the pilot,” Cosset said. “We have theories and assumptions about high density and low density and we want to see how that plays out.”

Cosset went on to describe how he doesn’t see the current model for delivery and autonomous vehicle-powered delivery as mutually exclusive.

“We believe they’re complimentary,” Cosset said. “We may realize the optimal time to use autonomous vehicles is between 10 – 11 in the morning and the rest of the day have a fully-staffed model.”

Down the road, Nuro will continue looking at additional partners for its local delivery ambitions. Although Nuro is excited about the partnership with Kroger, it’s not an exclusive one.

“Given we’re a startup, we can’t afford to put our eggs in one basket,” Ferguson said. “But we do have the full intention of going big with Kroger and trying to do as much as we can together.”

Other potential partners for Nuro may include those like local dry cleaners, bakeries and florists.

“I think the only way realistically to do that is to provide a way for customers to access all of these local services through one spot,” Ferguson said. “That way, we’ll be able to collectively provide this local community delivery service and have some way to get all these local businesses within the same experience.”

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Self-driving car startup Nuro teams up with Kroger for same-day grocery delivery

Nuro, an autonomous vehicle startup focused on local deliveries, has partnered with 135-year-old grocery retailer Kroger to offer same-day deliveries. The two have yet to announce which market this will be live in, but the plan is to launch the several-month-long pilot this fall.

Nuro’s intent is to use its self-driving technology in the last mile for the delivery of local goods and services. That could be things like groceries, dry cleaning, an item you left at a friends house or really anything within city limits that can fit inside one of Nuro’s vehicles. Nuro has two compartments that can fit up to six grocery bags each.

When it came to going to market, Nuro CEO Dave Ferguson told me groceries were most exciting to him. And Kroger particularly stood out because of its smart shelf technology and partnership Ocado around automated fulfillment centers.

“With the pilot, we’re excited about getting more experience interacting with real customers and understanding exactly what they want,” Ferguson said. “The things they love about it, the things they don’t love as much. As an organization for us, it’s also very valuable for us to have to exercise our operational muscle.”

Throughout the pilot program, Nuro will be looking to see how accurate its estimated delivery times are, how the public reacts to the vehicles and how regular, basic cars interact with self-driving ones.

The pilot will be live in just one market, but Kroger has 2,800 stores nationwide so Nuro sees the partnership as an opportunity to reach the vast majority of America. Kroger already offers same-day delivery to 75 percent of its customers. With Nuro on board, the idea is to deploy the self-driving cars in areas where Kroger has yet to offer delivery services.

“We want to be available to every single customer of ours,” Kroger Chief Digital Officer Yael Cosset told TechCrunch.

On the customer side, the experience will surely be different from what they’re used to. Currently, Kroger customers expect the grocery delivery drivers to bring their items to their front door. With Nuro’s vehicles, they’ll only go as far as curbside.

“This is an area where we’re going to learn a lot from the pilot,” Cosset said. “We have theories and assumptions about high density and low density and we want to see how that plays out.”

Cosset went on to describe how he doesn’t see the current model for delivery and autonomous vehicle-powered delivery as mutually exclusive.

“We believe they’re complimentary,” Cosset said. “We may realize the optimal time to use autonomous vehicles is between 10 – 11 in the morning and the rest of the day have a fully-staffed model.”

Down the road, Nuro will continue looking at additional partners for its local delivery ambitions. Although Nuro is excited about the partnership with Kroger, it’s not an exclusive one.

“Given we’re a startup, we can’t afford to put our eggs in one basket,” Ferguson said. “But we do have the full intention of going big with Kroger and trying to do as much as we can together.”

Other potential partners for Nuro may include those like local dry cleaners, bakeries and florists.

“I think the only way realistically to do that is to provide a way for customers to access all of these local services through one spot,” Ferguson said. “That way, we’ll be able to collectively provide this local community delivery service and have some way to get all these local businesses within the same experience.”

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Electric scooter and bike parking has arrived

Zagster, the bike-share company behind the Pace brand, is launching what it’s calling Pace Parking. The idea is for it so serve as a parking platform for bikes, electric bikes and electric scooters. Pace is first launching these in Chicago, Austin and Bloomington, Ind., with the plan to launch in additional cities this year.

This parking platform is designed to support dockless lock-to vehicles, like JUMP bikes and Skip scooters. In partnership with cities, private landowners and local businesses, the idea is to make sure communities have proper parking infrastructure.

“With the meteoric rise of dockless bikes, ebikes and scooters in the U.S., our cities are now in the early stages of a massive transformation in how people get around — one as significant as the personal automobile in 20th century,” Zagster CEO Tim Ericson said in a statement. “Imagine a city with tens of thousands of cars and nowhere to park them — this is the huge challenge faced by every major U.S. city right now. Without mobility parking infrastructure, cities have no solution to secure the flood of new vehicles descending upon their streets and sidewalks, and we are the first company to do something about it. As the pioneer of lock-to dockless bike sharing, we’re proud to deliver the first ever universal, secure, smart parking platform for parking not just Pace bikes, but other shared bikes, personal bikes, electric scooters, and future mobility vehicles.”

Earlier this year, Zagster raised a $15 million round led by Edison Capital Partners. The startup has also unveiled its new bike parking system for both shared and personal bikes.

“Bikes have always locked to things,” Zagster CEO Tim Ericson said in a press release. “Cities have been willing to experiment with dockless bikes that don’t lock to anything because they lack sufficient bike parking and, until Pace, lacked a partner willing to install this infrastructure at no cost.”

Zagster’s Pace is one of the newer entrants to the bike-share space, which consists of a number of startups and larger companies battling for contracts with cities all over the world.

Pace, which launched in December, currently operates in Tallahassee, Florida and Knoxville, Tennessee. With the funding, Zagster plans to launch Pace in additional cities this year. Zagster also operates a bike-share solution for municipalities looking to offer their own city-specific services. Zagster, which launched in 2007, operates more than 200 bike-shares across 35 states in the U.S. This move to support multi-modal transportation options likely signals the entrance of yet another electric scooter service.

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Lyft valuation hits $15.1 billion after fresh $600 million in funding

Lyft has raised an additional $600 million in a Series I financing round led by Fidelity Management & Research Company, pushing its post-money valuation to $15.1 billion. The company’s value has more than doubled in the past 14 months.

Senator Investment Group LP joined Fidelity in the capital raise. Fidelity has poured more than $800 million into the ride-hailing company, making it one of Lyft’s largest investors.

Lyft has spent the past 18 months aggressively expanding into new U.S. cities, as well as into Canada and pursuing its autonomous vehicle ambitions. Lyft’s plans — along with some of rival Uber’s scandalous missteps — have helped the company increase its market share in the U.S. to 35 percent. In January 2017, Lyft had just 22 percent market share in the United States.

Of course, scaling up is a costly affair. And Lyft has spent the past year seeking investor money. The ride-hailing company has raised $2.9 billion in primary capital — that includes the $600 million announced Wednesday — since April 2017.

In total, Lyft has raised $5.1 billion since its inception. Other investors from previous rounds include AllianceBernstein, Baillie Gifford, KKR, Janus CapitalG, Rakuten and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.

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Uber is helping Saudi Arabia drive its cultural transformation

Uber has about 95,000 monthly active drivers in Saudi Arabia. And right now, only one is a woman.

But that’s about to change. Uber (as well as Middle East ride-hailing rival Careem) is launching programs aimed at leveraging the sweeping cultural and economic changes afoot in the country.

On Sunday, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman lifted the country’s ban on women driving. It’s one of many changes spearheaded by the kingdom’s heir to the throne, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has encouraged reforms in Saudi Arabia in an effort to diversify the country’s economy.

Uber has spent months preparing for this moment, conducting research on the country’s demographics and developing an approach that will add to its driver ranks without veering too far from cultural norms there.

Uber says it will pilot a new feature this fall that will let women drivers in Saudi Arabia select a preference to be connected to female riders.

The pilot feature won’t guarantee that the female driver will get a female rider. But a look at Uber’s ridership numbers in the country and it’s clear the demographics favor a female driver to female rider matchup. Uber has about 1.33 million quarterly active riders in Saudi Arabia, and 80 percent of those riders are women.

Uber says market research conducted in collaboration with Ipsos helped it understand (and ultimately take advantage of) the opportunity.

The research found 31 percent of Saudi women surveyed were interested in driving as a way to earn money. The company has also discovered that 74 percent of prospective women drivers interviewed would only be interested in driving women riders.

Uber has made other changes to its operations in Saudi Arabia in an effort to attract and retrain this new batch of drivers. In March, Uber announced Masaruky — which means “your path” in Arabic — a two-year initiative that aims to increase women’s participation in the workforce through access to affordable transportation.

Uber kicked off the campaign with a pledge of SAR 1 million ($266,620) and a partnership with the Al Nahda Society to financially support women interested in obtaining a driver license. Earlier this month, Uber rolled out a registration portal called Masaruky for Saudi women interested in driving on Uber. A company spokeswoman for Uber’s Middle East operations said more than 100 Saudi women have signed up so far, expressing interest in becoming drivers.

The company also recently finished a support center for female drivers in Riyadh.

Meanwhile, Careem has received more than 2,000 applications since announcing it would recruit female drivers in Saudi Arabia. The company has a goal of hiring 20,000 Captinahs (its term for female drivers) across the Middle East by 2020.

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Autonomous delivery drone startup Matternet raises $16 million round led by Boeing’s venture arm

Because autonomous delivery drones are undoubtedly coming, Boeing HorizonX Ventures, the aviation company’s venture arm, led a $16 million round in drone startup Matternet . Other investors include Swiss Post, Sony Innovation Fund and Levitate Capital. With this funding, Matternet’s plan is to further expand throughout the U.S. and internationally in urban environments.

“Matternet’s technology and proven track record make the development of a safe, global autonomous air mobility system a near-term reality,” Boeing HorizonX Ventures Managing Director Brian Schettler said in a statement. “Between the company’s success in Switzerland and being selected by the FAA to test unmanned aerial networks in the U.S., we are excited to work together to reimagine how the world connects and shape the next generation of transportation solutions.”

Just last month, the Federal Aviation Administration selected, among others, Matternet for drone logistics operations for U.S. hospitals as part of its Unmanned Aircraft System pilot program. In 2015, Matternet started testing the first drone delivery system in Zurich, Switzerland to transport blood and pathology samples to labs.

Matternet has since expanded its operations in Switzerland, and has conducted more than 1,700 flights over densely populated areas to make more than 850 deliveries of patient samples.