Autotech Ventures, a venture capital firm that primarily invests in startups, will announce several investments in ground transportation companies within the next few months, Quin Garcia, managing director of the VC, told Auto Finance News.
“We are actively looking at several companies across the ground transportation spectrum, but unfortunately cannot go into specifics beyond that,” he said. Investments in ground transportation and auto finance startups have been heating up over the past few years, in part due to innovative technologies such as artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, and e-commerce.
Credit decisioning platform ZestFinance — which recently partnered with Ford Motor Credit Co. — raised over $67 million in funding, for example. Meanwhile, AutoGravity raised $80 million to date and counts Daimler AG and VW Credit Inc. among its investors.
Based in Menlo Park, Calif., Autotech Ventures’ first investment was in Lyft in 2016 and has since invested in seven additional startups. These include stakes in Outdoorsy, an online marketplace of shared recreational vehicles; Metawave, a developer of autonomous vehicle radar; and Volta, a free EV charging solution funded by advertising.
Overall, the company plans to invest in 10 to 15 more startups out of the current $120 million dollar fund, Garcia said.
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