Munich-based Kyte founders secure a further 26 million in the Valley

You have set up your rental car startup in Silicon Valley and are now planning to expand into Europe: The three Munich-based Ludwig Schönack, Nikolaus Volk and Francesco Wiedemann now have additional risk capital from collected from prominent donors. After the first 7.3 million euros (US $ 9 million) in January of this year is now followed by a further EUR 26 million (US $ 30 million).

Listed is the current round from US hedge fund financier Park West Asset Management and San Francisco-based VC Sterling Road. The old investors around DN Capital and Moving Capital have once again taken part. The Flixbus founders Daniel Krauss, Jochen Engert and André Schwämmlein.

With the money, the expansion into Canada is only for the beginning of next year and then planned to Europe. Founder Volk does not want to announce when it will start in Germany. From initially three US cities in the United States, Kyte is now represented in ten cities within six months: including Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City and San Francisco. Kyte has also brought reinforcements to the team, including Nick Cobb, former chief engineer of the US startup Aurora for autonomous driving and the former vice president of the e-scooter provider Bird, Chandra Morando.

Tele trips are the next step

Kyte offers a rental car platform, through which you not only book a vehicle, but also drive up to the door leaves. Quasi a delivery service for rental cars. According to Volk, this is only the first step. So-called tele-drivers are planned next. This means that, in the long term, drivers will no longer deliver the vehicles in person, but that the cars will be remotely controlled from an office to their destination. The Berlin startup Vay , for example, is developing a corresponding technology for this.

Kyte first wants to develop the rental car market and then later develop the technology through external suppliers to retrofit. The Munich-based company is currently buying its own rental car for this too. A year ago, 90 percent of the fleets were provided by other rental companies. “Now we have properly upgraded so that 70 percent of the vehicles come from a leasing entity that we control ourselves,” says Volk.

Currently managed Kyte claims to have a four-digit number of vehicles. “The fleet has increased tenfold within a year,” says Volk. With the new investment, the fleet should soon reach five figures. According to Volk, the company, which now has 70 employees, makes seven-digit sales per month.

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