Ridecell Inc. announced that it has expanded its Series B equity investment round. The new investments have more than doubled the capital raised in the initial Series B round — $28 million announced in May — to more than $60 million.
The complete Series B round is now being led by Activate Capital, and Raj Atluru, Managing Director and Co-founder of the firm, will join the company's board as the first outside director. In addition to Activate, new Ridecell investors include Munich Re Venture's ERGO Fund, LG Technology Ventures, BNP Paribas, Sony Innovation Fund, Ally Ventures and Khosla Ventures, as well as additional investment from DENSO. These investors join Cox Automotive, Initialized Capital, DENSO, Penske, Deutsche Bahn and Mitsui who were announced in May as Series B investors.
"Investor interest in cloud-based mobility platforms and autonomous vehicles increases almost daily as the disruptive potential of these new technologies are realized," said Aarjav Trivedi, CEO of Ridecell. "At Ridecell we continue to achieve important milestones on our path to autonomous mobility, including our recent California licensing, which allows on-road operational testing of our fully autonomous Auro-equipped self-driving vehicles. The Ridecell platform now supports driver-operated and autonomous on-demand vehicle services using a single cloud-based solution."
Ridecell investors represent the most important and strategically relevant segments of the transportation industry. These include automotive electronics manufacturers, vehicle fleet managers, automotive software and hardware integrators, vehicle financers/insurers, and transportation providers. In addition, to equity investment, these partners offer Ridecell critical insight into the transportation market and strategic components of a wide-ranging mobility ecosystem.
"We are excited to announce our investment in Ridecell and to join a terrific set of strategic investors inside the company," commented Raj Atluru. "We believe that transportation is being disrupted in fundamental ways and across multiple dimensions, all at once. With growing global urbanization, mobility services are replacing personal car ownership and fleets will increasingly be electrified and autonomous. Ridecell's platform connects and enables the entire ecosystem of participants required to deliver on this promise. We are investing at the very center of the new mobility revolution."
The new funds raised will be used for the continued development of Ridecell's mobility and operations platform that supports use cases ranging from carsharing to completely autonomous ridehailing.
