Bolt, the Estonian mobility company, has announced the closing of a €628m funding round. The latest round of funding is the company’s largest to date and increases its valuation to €7.4b.
Bolt has built an ecosystem of mobility-related products over the past eight years with ride-hailing, e-scooter and e-bike rental, to car-sharing, food, and grocery delivery. The company states that it’s “consistently striven to prove the point that owning a personal car is no longer a necessity”.
The latest round of funding is expected to help accelerate Bolt’s mission to help cities transform urban areas into “sustainable, people-friendly spaces” by reducing the need for more parking spaces, lowering congestion and emissions.
“For decades, cities have been built for private cars, rather than the people living and working in them. At Bolt, we think this approach is outdated, which is why our mission is to create cities for people, not cars”, said Markus Villig, Founder and CEO of Bolt.
“We’ve developed products that offer better and more affordable alternatives for almost every purpose a private car serves. We’re committed to working with cities to help people make the switch towards shared mobility options like ride-hailing and light vehicles to transform urban areas into sustainable, people-friendly spaces”.
Bolt confirmed it would also use the funds to expand and further improve its suite of mobility and delivery products, which are currently used by more than 100 million customers in 45 countries and over 400 cities across Europe and Africa. It cited one example as Bolt Market, one of its newest products, developed and launched during the pandemic and already operating dozens of stores in ten countries across Europe. The new investment is going to help expand Bolt Market in 2022 as the company plans to have hundreds of stores operational by the end of the year.
The investment round was led by Sequoia and Fidelity Management.
You can find more information about Bolt and its funding round on its website.
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