Led · Convertible Note · Dec 2024

STELLA Automotive AI builds AI-powered customer engagement solutions for auto dealerships, including inbound call handling, service scheduling, lead nurturing and outbound engagement. Its platform leverages proprietary conversational AI, integrates with leading dealership software, and reports analytics on customer behavior. The company has expanded from inbound interactions into outbound engagement with its Catalyst tool to create a full-lifecycle engagement platform. STELLA serves dealership groups that are adding the product weekly and reports tens of thousands of customer calls being handled 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The company is based in Tampa, Fla., and plans continued product development and commercial expansion following its Series B financing.

Participated · Series A · May 2024

STELLA provides an AI assistant for auto dealerships that handles inbound calls, chat, and web interactions, performing tasks like answering FAQs, routing calls, and booking sales and service appointments. The assistant is trained on a wide range of automotive retail topics and can simultaneously handle unlimited inbound calls with natural-language conversations 24/7. STELLA’s products sit on top of dealers' legacy software (including integrations with Reynolds and Reynolds) and report analytics about customer behavior to dealers. Dealership groups are adding STELLA to their stores weekly, with tens of thousands of customer calls being handled around the clock. The company says it uses dealer feedback to rapidly enhance current offerings and build a roadmap of future products dealers want to deploy. STELLA raised capital to drive market growth and support ongoing product enhancement and development. STELLA Automotive AI provides high-end conversational AI that handles telephone, chat, and web interactions for automotive dealers, acting like a staff member to answer and route calls, book appointments, and handle FAQs. The product sits on top of dealers' legacy software and delivers analytics about customer behavior. Dealer groups are adding STELLA to their stores weekly, with tens of thousands of customer calls being handled 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. STELLA says its initial product replaces a labor-intensive process and enables dealers to redeploy staffing to other customer-facing areas. The company closed a seed financing via convertible promissory notes from strategic investors and plans to use the investment to increase focus on sales, market share, and new product innovation. Presidio served as STELLA's exclusive financial advisor since its market introduction in 2022 and helped procure strategic capital and industry advice.

Led · Series A · Jan 2023

Sheeva.AI offers an in-car payments and commerce solution that uses patented precise geolocation technology to automatically detect a vehicle at a specific gas pump, parking spot, EV charging space, or drive-through lane. Its platform integrates via an open API, cloud payments and an SDK to enable secure digital-wallet transactions without additional hardware or new apps. The company plans to use new funding to build out its production team and expand its automotive partner footprint. It intends to add services partners across fueling, EV charging, parking, tolling, curbside retail and QSR drive-thru verticals. Sheeva.AI was founded in 2016 and is headquartered in Tysons Corner, VA, with offices in Detroit, New Delhi, Dresden and Nagoya. The company recently closed a $9.25 million Series A to support these growth initiatives. Sheeva.AI offers an Open API platform that uses real-time vehicle location to automate payments, trigger driver-centric contextual events, and streamline in-vehicle services such as fueling, EV charging, parking, tolls, and curbside retail. The platform gives automotive OEMs and service providers rich real-time usage data to improve and expand offerings. Sheeva.AI highlights growth across North America, APAC, and Europe and positions its technology for broader adoption in the automotive ecosystem. The company operates offices in Turin, New Delhi, San Francisco, and Detroit. Management says it aims to drive growth to millions of vehicles in the next two years. Sheeva.AI is an alum of the Conscious Venture Lab 2017 accelerator (Cohort 3) and has received multi-year support from that network.