San Francisco-based Kyte has raised another round of funding, several months after announcing that it had secured a $200 million line of credit.
On Thursday, the car rental startup announced a $60 million Series B round led by InterAlpen Partners and also including Valor Equity Partners, Anthemis, Citi Ventures, Hearst Ventures, DN Capital, 1984 Ventures, FJ Labs and Urban Innovation Fund.
It brings Kyte's total funding to just under $300 million, with two-thirds of that debt. It also includes $30 million from a Series A round that closed in late 2021.
Kyte is on a mission to eliminate private car ownership in dense metro areas where access to parking garages might be limited and the cost of ownership is expensive.
According to the U.S. Census, 8.5% of households nationally have no vehicle. California has a slightly higher rate of ownership — only 7% of households don't have a vehicle. But in San Francisco, nearly 31% of households don't have a vehicle, more than quadruple the state average.
Eventually, the company's goal is to have a fleet of autonomous vehicles that will deliver themselves to and from customers' homes but humans currently handle pick ups and deliveries.
"For us it's important to build a robust commercial use case today and then feed technology into that system instead of spending a lot of money on R&D and hoping that it will come together eventually," co-founder Ludwig Schoenack told me in March.
That puts Kyte in competition with other alternatives to private car ownership like Hertz, ZipCar, Uber, Lyft, taxis and public transportation. This summer, Dallas-based Alto launched its ride-share service in San Francisco, and a local nonprofit called Homobiles has provided donation-based rides in the Bay Area to people who identify as queer for more than a decade.
Globally, the rental car market is expected to grow around 44% reaching $141 billion in 2028 from $98 billion in 2020, according to a report from Grand View Research.
Kyte says it has around 100 employees and plans on tripling its fleet as it expands across the U.S. The company declined to specify the exact size of its current fleet but says it has thousands of cars across 14 markets including San Francisco, Los Angeles, D.C. and New York, according to its website. It is also planning on an eventual expansion into Canada and Europe.
