Tyred raises £2.5 million for AI bike maintenance platform

Tyred has raised £2.5 million to build what it describes as an AI-powered platform for bike ownership, combining maintenance, insurance, warranties and finance. Raw Ventures and Ada Ventures backed the round, alongside angel investors including Anton Buzdalin, an investor in Dwelly’s pre-seed round.

The London startup is trying to move bicycle servicing from repair-after-failure to earlier detection, using sensors, IoT data and software models to identify problems before riders or fleet operators report them. Tyred has not disclosed its valuation, revenue or the terms of the financing.

Founded in 2022 by Lancelot Hoare, Nikita Baranov and Daniel Bursztynski, Tyred began as a mobile bicycle repair business. The company now says it has serviced more than 100,000 bikes in the past year and maintains about 50,000 Lime bikes across London, including battery maintenance and swaps for the shared e-bike operator.

That operating history is central to Tyred’s pitch. Predictive maintenance models need failure, repair and usage data, and bike fleets produce that data at a higher volume than individual consumers. The company says its platform will use real-time information and maintenance records to flag wear or component degradation before a bike is taken out of service.

From repair service to ownership stack

Tyred’s product plan reaches beyond workshop scheduling. The company says it wants to put servicing, cover, warranty handling and finance into one connected product for riders and commercial fleets. Hoare, Tyred’s co-founder and chief executive, said the aim is to make bike ownership more reliable by bringing those services into a single platform and using data to address issues earlier.

Bursztynski, co-founder and chief technology officer, said the funding will support the technology behind the company’s preventative maintenance system and help keep more bikes available for use. Baranov, co-founder and chief operating officer, said cycling needs reliability and service levels closer to other transport categories, with less dependence on reactive repairs.

The company did not provide technical detail on its sensor stack, model performance, customer pricing or the split between consumer and fleet revenue. It also did not say how much of the new capital will go into hardware versus software development.

Competition in micromobility services

Tyred is entering a market where several startups are already trying to own parts of the bike and e-bike operating layer. London-based Laka has raised capital for bicycle insurance built around real-time risk modelling, including a £14.1 million Series B. Zoomo has raised $100 million for e-bike fleets and software used by delivery operators.

Tyred’s bet is that a broader bundle can keep customers on one platform rather than limiting the relationship to insurance, repairs or fleet operations. That is a larger product surface, but also a harder one to execute, especially if the company has to serve individual riders and enterprise fleet operators at the same time.

The new funding will be used for engineering hires, product development and expansion of Tyred’s UK platform, the company said. Tyred also plans to enter European markets, though it did not name target countries or provide a timetable.

Grand View Research valued the global bicycle-sharing market at $9.26 billion in 2024 and projected it to reach $16.44 billion by 2030, with a 10.2% compound annual growth rate. Tyred’s round is small relative to that market size, but the company’s Lime work gives it a data and operations base that many early mobility software startups lack.

This story draws on original reporting from TechFundingNews.