AUSTIN, Texas, March 14, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — UP.Labs, the venture lab of mobility investment firm UP.Partners, has partnered with Porsche AG to launch six new companies over a period of three years. Today, they launched their first startup, Pull Systems — a software platform that helps manufacturers and operators of electric vehicles manage and automate Performance. Pull Systems has also successfully secured a $5M Seed round, led by UP.Partners.
At the heart of Pull Systems is a library of proprietary machine learning models that predict vehicle behavior under millions of different scenarios. Armed with these insights, users can leverage Pull Systems’ analysis tools, VIN-specific microservices and automation workflows to predict maintenance, improve driver experiences and boost after-sales revenues.
Pull Systems is currently working on optimum use-cases, including how to enhance battery health across global fleets of EVs. Porsche and Pull Systems are evaluating initial potential areas of collaboration and Pull Systems plans to add several more carmakers to its service over the next year.
“We built this product in a critical year for energy, mobility and machine learning,” said Henry Furman, former Venture Head of Product at UP.Labs, now Chief Product Officer of Pull Systems. “Electrification is an extremely complex undertaking for the industry and we need to bring the best minds together — especially in markets like California and Germany — to build software that can make it more manageable. That’s exactly what we’ve done with Pull Systems. I want to thank UP.Partners and Porsche for believing in this idea and leading the investment.”
“We want to strengthen our existing, broad-based startup ecosystem with an external growth engine,” says Lutz Meschke, Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board of Porsche AG and Member of the Executive Board for Finance and IT. “Through UP.Labs, Porsche secures access to international talents and their know-how. The aim is to further enhance Porsche’s position in the current transformation phase of the automotive industry in the long term. Above all, we strive for new sources of innovation.” Since 2016, Porsche has been active in identifying and taking stakes in roughly 40 startups with new business models and new technologies.
About Pull Systems
Pull Systems, the first startup to emerge from the UP.Labs and Porsche partnership, aims to offer fleet performance management software to electric vehicle suppliers, manufacturers and operators. The software’s analysis and automation tools help users predict maintenance, deploy optimized over-the-air updates, improve driver experiences, boost after-sales revenues and support many other critical use-cases. As the next generation of mobility takes shape, Pull Systems will extend its offering to additional transport modalities and propulsion systems, leveraging the full extent of the UP and Porsche partnership to accelerate its impact on the mobility industry. For more information, visit pull.systems.
About UP.Partners
UP.Partners is Transforming the Moving World by building and investing in companies that move people and goods cleaner, faster, safer, and at lower cost — on the ground, in the air, on the sea, and in space. The multi-strategy firm achieves this goal through its unique and virtuous ecosystem encompassing UP.Ventures, UP.Labs, and UP.Summit. UP.Ventures invests in companies and technologies to enable the future of mobility, working with some of the world’s most innovative investors and entrepreneurs. With flagship launch partner Porsche, UP.Labs is a first-of-its-kind venture lab, partnering with the world’s largest corporations to identify the most pressing challenges that they, and broader society, face. The UP.Summit is an invitation-only experience co-hosted with Tom and Steuart Walton and Ross Perot Jr., in Bentonville, AR and Dallas/Ft. Worth, TX respectively, bringing together the world’s most innovative minds to rethink the future of transportation. For more information, visit www.UP.partners or follow on Twitter @UpPartnersVC or LinkedIn.
The Porsche Startup Ecosystem
Porsche is consistently pushing ahead with the expansion of its startup ecosystem in order to increase its innovative strength. In addition to the cooperation with UP.Labs, the sports car manufacturer uses various other instruments. The venture capital unit Porsche Ventures invests directly in promising startups. The company builder Forward31 is a business unit of Porsche Digital that aims to build a portfolio of promising startups in order to tap into new target groups and value chains beyond the core automotive business. The APX accelerator program, a joint venture between Porsche and the media company Axel Springer, is used to further develop companies that are still in an earlier startup phase. In addition, Porsche is a partner of the open innovation platform “Startup Autobahn.”
Contact:
Kelli Liegel
[email protected]
