CarOnSale Secures €70 Million Series C Funding for European Expansion

Berlin-based CarOnSale, a digital B2B marketplace specializing in used car trading, has successfully closed a €70 million Series C funding round. This significant capital injection is earmarked for an aggressive expansion strategy across European markets, with the ambitious goal of scaling its platform to facilitate annual sales of 1 million used cars.

Founded in 2018 by Tom Krüger, Fabian Roth, Oguz Özgüler, and Maximilian Schilling, CarOnSale was established to address a critical inefficiency within Europe's professional used car trade. This sector, valued at over €450 billion annually, has long been characterized by its highly fragmented nature and a persistent reliance on offline processes, making it resistant to modernization. The founders identified a clear opportunity to digitize this traditional market, aiming to introduce unprecedented levels of efficiency, transparency, and trust into the complex landscape of cross-border vehicle transactions for professional entities. Their mission is to transform how dealers and OEMs conduct business, moving away from cumbersome manual processes towards a streamlined digital ecosystem.

CarOnSale's core offering is a fully integrated software ecosystem designed to seamlessly connect professional car dealers and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) across national borders. The platform provides an end-to-end solution that encompasses every critical step of the used car transaction process. This includes comprehensive vehicle inspections, ensuring accurate condition reporting; sophisticated logistics management, simplifying the movement of vehicles across regions; and secure payment processing, mitigating financial risks for both buyers and sellers. By offering these services within a single, cohesive platform, CarOnSale aims to eliminate friction points, reduce administrative burdens, and enhance the overall reliability of transactions. The company has already demonstrated significant traction, reportedly collaborating with major OEMs and thousands of independent dealers throughout Europe, processing substantial transaction volumes that underscore its role in driving digital transformation within the automotive trade.

The Series C round saw new investor Northzone take a lead role, co-leading with existing investor HV Capital. Additional support came from prominent firms including Insight Partners, Stripes, and Creandum. Northzone's participation signals a strong conviction in CarOnSale's potential to establish itself as a category-defining, pan-European platform within one of the continent's most substantial markets. Investors view CarOnSale's comprehensive, end-to-end software as a transformative tool, capable of benefiting a wide spectrum of businesses—from small, independent dealerships to the world's largest automotive manufacturers. This backing reflects a shared belief in the company's capacity to introduce advanced technological solutions, including the potential for AI integration, into an industry long perceived as archaic, ultimately aiming for a significant, generational impact on the market.