EV charging platform Presto raises $15 million in seed funding

Presto, an all-in-one EV charging platform, has raised $15 million in seed funding from Union Square Ventures and other investors. The company was founded in 2023 by former Uber executives J.J. Raynor and Ashwin Dias. Its platform is used by electric fleets including Uber, Avis, Hertz and Zipcar.

Presto will use the new funds to onboard new fleets, integrate more chargers and add new features.

Presto’s app and APIs enable fleet operators to find charging stations and pay for EV charging across Presto’s thousands of partner public charging stations.

According to Presto, there are more than 200,000 public charging stations in the US, operated by over 50 different companies, each with its own software, mobile app and charging hardware. For fleets, navigating this diverse charging ecosystem is a challenge (to put it mildly). Presto’s platform is designed to simplify this situation, allowing access to thousands of stations through one easy-to-use app or API. Presto’s recommendation engine monitors real-time information on charger availability and reliability to recommend chargers to fleets.

“Presto addresses a critical gap in the EV ecosystem—a unified and effortless charging experience—that enables fleets and their drivers to charge across networks,” said J.J. Raynor, co-founder and CFO of Presto. “This new funding allows us to scale up our efforts to support more fleets and charging partners.”

Car rental companies including Avis, Hertz and Zipcar provide the Presto app to their customers when they rent EVs. Uber drivers get access to special pricing with EVgo, and can charge across networks via the Presto app.

Presto’s founders “saw a problem that EV rideshare drivers deal with every day, and they jumped in to fix it,” said Rachel Pinkham, Head of US and Canadian Electrification Operations at Uber. “Features like price discovery and the recommendation engine are clever, practical tools that genuinely help drivers save time and money.”

“Presto has made onboarding new fleet customers easy for us,” said Kate Gridley, Business Development Lead at EVgo. “Presto’s platform provides fleets with the tools they need to charge seamlessly, and fleet usage has been an important driver of our rising network utilization.”

Source: Presto

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