Coming out of stealth: Vay — the world’s leading teledrive mobility company
It’s rare that we announce a new portfolio company nearly three years after the Creandum Funds invested — but for this unique company it was definitely worth waiting: Here comes Vay, a Berlin-headquartered deep tech company with groundbreaking technology in the field of autonomous driving. Vay will be the first company operating a certified driverless commercial mobility service on public streets in Europe as soon as next year.
And while some of you might have seen cars driving through Berlin with strange-looking hardware attached and no human touching the steering wheel — this is only the beginning of an exciting journey of a new form of transportation.
Let’s take a step back and look at the current world of transport. Approximately 1.3 million people die each year as a result of road traffic crashes — and these accidents are the leading cause of road injuries and death among children and young adults aged 5–29.
The main cause behind most accidents? Human imperfection leading to speeding, intoxication, distraction, and fatigue.
Now imagine a world where all those factors are removed.
Enter Vay — Safer than traditional driving
Vay’s fleet is already operating with safety drivers across the streets of Berlin. But from next year, Vay will be able to completely take out the safety driver from its vehicles — and have the cars controlled 100% by ‘teledrivers’.
What does that mean? Vay’s drivers will be sitting in an office in central Berlin, driving the cars remotely.
Vay’s system is engineered to the highest and latest automotive safety and security standards (ISO26262, ISO21434). In addition, when compared with traditional driving, Vay’s teledrivers will have augmented skills, including 360-degree blindspot-free vision and supervision for fatigue or distractions. Safety is at the core of Vay.
The team — a collection of the most relevant experience you can think of
One of our key assets at Creandum is our presence in San Francisco. Not only does this allow us an overview of what’s going on across the pond, but it also brings us closer to a global pool of the most interesting and talented founders.
Just a few months into our San Francisco office, in 2018, Peter was introduced to a fellow German, based in Silicon Valley: Thomas von der Ohe. We built a relationship with Thomas over the following month, and Simon and Peter ultimately decided to partner up with the team for their Series A.
Together with co-founders Fabrizio Scelsi, and Bogdan Djukic, it was clear he was on to something new. Together with the rest of their team, they unite experience from some of the world’s leading automotive companies: Tesla, Google, Waymo, Zoox, Skype, Byton, Argo, Amazon, Uber as well as Audi, BMW, Daimler — you name it.
Intrigued by this combined experience, we stayed close to the team and followed their progress with keen eyes. The majority of the team is in Berlin to settle ground in Europe while the other part works out of Portland, Oregon.
No half-measures
The Creandum funds backed Vay’s $30m Series A round back in 2019, together with a range of fellow European VCs such as Atomico, LaFamiglia, System.One, Visionaries Club, Signals as well as stellar business angels Patrick Pichette (Partner at Inovia Capital, chairman of the board at Twitter, former global CFO at Google), Cristina Stenbeck (Board member of Spotify, chairman of the board at Zalando), Qasar Younis (co-founder and CEO of Applied Intuition, former COO and Partner of Y Combinator), and Formula 1 champion Nico Rosberg.
Three years later, Thomas and his team continue to impress us and we look forward to accompanying the company in its next steps, establishing ‘TeleDriving’ as a new path to an autonomous future.
- Read more about Vay coming out of stealth in Bloomberg and Handelsblatt
- Find open roles at Vay here
- Read more about our Perspective on Mobility Tech here
