automotive-technology
(7)
SellAnyCar.com
SellAnyCar.com is a Dubai-based automotive marketplace that buys used cars directly from consumers. Sellers get a free online valuation in seconds, bring the car to a branch for a free professional inspection, and receive a guaranteed offer within 30 minutes. Once accepted, the company pays by bank transfer, handles the paperwork and title transfer, and auctions the vehicle to a network of dealers. Founded in 2013 by serial entrepreneur Saygin Yalcin, it markets itself as the Middle East's first and largest car-buying service and has expanded across the UAE and into Saudi Arabia.
Peter Yorke
Peter Yorke is the CEO and co-founder of Voyomotive, a San Francisco connected-car company whose VOYO device turns an ordinary car's OBD-II port into a smartphone-controlled second brain. A native Californian who has worn the hats of scientist, venture capitalist, and serial entrepreneur, Yorke built a platform that locks doors by proximity, reads manufacturer fault codes, logs trips, and crowdsources road-hazard alerts. VOYO swept the 2015 SEMA show awards and exhibited as one of the most advanced after-market connected-car systems at CES 2016.
Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies
Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies (RV Tech) is a 50/50 joint venture launched in November 2024 that fuses Rivian's software and electrical-hardware know-how with Volkswagen Group's global manufacturing scale. Co-headquartered in Palo Alto, it builds the zonal electrical architecture, operating systems, in-vehicle AI, and cloud-connectivity stack that will power next-generation software-defined vehicles across Volkswagen, Audi, Scout, Rivian, and more - aiming to make every new car smarter, cheaper to build, and continuously upgradable over the air.
Luminar Technologies
Luminar Technologies is an automotive lidar and perception company founded by teenage Thiel Fellow Austin Russell. It built 1550nm lidar sensors and software designed to give passenger cars, trucks and robotaxis long-range, high-resolution sight in the dark, winning production deals with Volvo, Mercedes-Benz and Polestar and partnerships with NVIDIA and Mobileye. After a 2020 SPAC debut at a roughly $3.4B valuation, mounting losses, a 2025 CEO ethics inquiry that removed Russell, and the loss of its anchor Volvo contract pushed the company into Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 2025.
Austin Russell
Austin Russell founded Luminar Technologies at 16, built lidar hardware in his parents' garage, dropped out of Stanford after three months on a Thiel Fellowship, and briefly became the world's youngest self-made billionaire at 25 when Luminar went public in December 2020. His company's 1550nm lidar sensors were integrated into production vehicles from Volvo and Mercedes-Benz, representing a rare case of autonomous vehicle hardware reaching mass-market cars. After a highly publicized attempt to acquire Forbes magazine fell through in 2023, Russell resigned as Luminar's CEO in May 2025 following a board ethics inquiry, and the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 2025.
Maxwell Zhou
Maxwell Zhou (周光) is the founder and CEO of DeepRoute.ai, a Shenzhen-based autonomous driving company he built from a 2019 conviction that AI could prevent traffic deaths. A Tsinghua-trained physicist turned AI PhD, Zhou led sensor fusion breakthroughs at Baidu and co-founded Roadstar.ai before pivoting to build what is now one of China's fastest-scaling third-party ADAS providers - deploying its end-to-end intelligent driving platform across 300,000+ vehicles and accumulating 1.3 billion kilometers of real-world data with over $500M in total funding.
Sameer Misson
Sameer Misson is the co-founder and CEO of Gluon Solutions, Inc., a Livermore, California-based enterprise software company building IoT, AI, and cloud platforms for the automotive and fuel ecosystem. Under his leadership, Gluon has developed Petromo (fuel station and convenience store management), Gluon Auto (vehicle and fleet monitoring), and EZ Lister (auto parts catalog and fitment tools), collectively serving 100+ businesses. A serial entrepreneur with roots in his family's automotive parts business (Mission Trading Company / MTC Parts), Misson also holds a J.D. from Golden Gate University and studied computer science at UC Berkeley, combining legal, business, and technical expertise in his work across IoT, blockchain, and SaaS.