About KAROS

KAROS develops intelligent networks of daily mobility by exploiting Artificial Intelligence technologies to optimize daily door-to-door journeys by combining dynamic carpooling and public transport. The company is developing the reservation platform and the community of use of the future shared autonomous vehicle connected to public transport.

Created in 2014 by Olivier Binet, a specialist in the financing and development of growth companies, and Tristan Croiset, a Big Data and Machine Learning expert, KAROS uses artificial intelligence technologies to transform individual vehicles into public transport networks. With a team of 22 people, KAROS invented the “short-car-pooling” and launched its mobile application at the end of 2015. The service has already convinced over 110,000 users and offers more than 400,000 carpool opportunities every day.

The KAROS application is currently the most used in France for short-distance carpooling and has grown exponentially by 8% per week for more than 18 months.

The Deal

KAROS, a pioneering short-carpool®, announces a € 4.2 million fundraising from its historic investors and a pool of private investors, including:- Aster, a venture capital firm specializing in the fields of mobility, energy and industry;- Alto Invest, a management company specializing in the financing of innovative European SMEs, a subsidiary of Eiffel Investment Group;- Aglaé Ventures, Arnault Group early stage investment program, Bernard Arnault’s family holding company;- Saint James Financial, Family Office of Michael Benabou (co-founder of vente-privée.com)- Renowned business angels, together with Xavier Niel, Franck Le Ouay (co-founder of Criteo) and Charles Egly (co-founder of Younited Credit).This is a record investment in the car-to-work carpooling sector.

Quotes

“Our technological and scientific approach, which made it possible to bring out this new practice of daily mobility that we called the short-carpooling®, proved its relevance to our users and our customers. The support of leading investors today strengthens our strategy and opens up many development opportunities to grow a very large community of users and support our corporate and community customers.” say Olivier Binet and Tristan Croiset, co-founders of Karos

“The innovative technologies developed by Karos enable the service to stand out significantly from competing offers by offering an optimization of short-trips and to develop a more shared and more sustainable mobility. We were seduced by this approach perfectly aligned with the values of our investment funds.” say Franck Halley, associate director of Alta Invest

“Car pooling is an alternative solution that constitutes a formidable vector of attractiveness for public transport. Market leader, Karos densifies virtual networks and federates a community in full expansion. Aster is happy to accompany Olivier and his team in their next phase of growth.” Said Pierre Cordelle, Senior Associate of Aster Capital