Automotive Ventures is excited to announce an investment out of our Mobility Fund II: Skygrid.
We participated in the company’s recent financing alongside strategic and angel investors.
Why We Invested in Skygrid
At Automotive Ventures, we back founders building the infrastructure, tools, and platforms shaping the future of mobility. Our investment in Skygrid reflects this mission.
As vehicles become increasingly software-defined, they are also becoming powerful compute platforms. Modern electric vehicles ship with high-performance processors designed for autonomy, perception, and AI workloads. Yet for the vast majority of their lifecycle, this compute capacity sits idle.
At the same time, the AI industry is facing a growing compute crisis. AI inference demand is expected to reach hundreds of billions of dollars in annual spend, while the cost, energy consumption, and carbon footprint of traditional data centers continue to rise.
Skygrid is building a new category of computing infrastructure to address both challenges.
The Problem: Rising AI Compute Costs and Underutilized Vehicle Hardware
AI adoption is accelerating across industries, driving explosive demand for compute. Traditional data centers require enormous capital investment, long deployment timelines, and significant energy consumption. As AI workloads scale, these centralized facilities are becoming increasingly expensive and carbon-intensive.
At the same time, millions of vehicles are being equipped with high-performance computing systems capable of running advanced AI workloads. These systems are designed for peak autonomy and safety use cases, but in practice, they remain underutilized for most of the day.
This creates a structural inefficiency:
- Massive, underused compute capacity embedded in vehicles
- Rising costs and environmental impact from centralized data centers
- No orchestration layer to connect these two realities
The market is wide open for a distributed, software-defined alternative.
The Solution: A Virtual Data Center Built on Vehicle Compute
Skygrid is building an intelligence orchestration layer that turns idle vehicle GPUs into a distributed AI compute network.
Rather than constructing new data centers, Skygrid’s software taps into the dormant computing capacity already installed in electric vehicles. These vehicles act as compute nodes, forming a virtual data center capable of running AI inference workloads.
Key elements of the platform
- Software-Only Solution (Zero CapeEx): Runs directly on existing vehicle high-performance computers with no hardware changes and no need to build new facilities.
- Distributed Compute Network: Idle vehicles become nodes in a global AI inference grid.
- Lower Cost Structure: Estimated 30–50% lower cost than traditional data center compute.
- Sustainability Advantage: Up to 75% lower carbon footprint by reusing existing hardware.
We believe this represents a fundamental extension of computing infrastructure: complementing, rather than replacing, traditional data centers.
Just as the energy grid evolved from a single source to a diversified mix of generation technologies, the future of compute is likely to include a blend of centralized data centers and distributed, edge-based infrastructure.
Why We’re Excited About Skygrid
- A New Layer of Mobility Infrastructure: As vehicles become high-performance edge computers, orchestrating their idle compute represents a new infrastructure layer at the intersection of mobility and AI.
- Massive and Growing AI Inference Market: AI inference is projected to reach a $250B+ market by 2030. Skygrid targets this growth with a lower-cost, more sustainable compute alternative.
- Capital-Efficient, Software-Only Model: Skygrid’s platform requires no new hardware deployment, enabling a zero-CapEx model with structurally lower operating costs than traditional data centers.
- Deep Domain Expertise in AI and Automotive: The founding team previously led AI and machine learning infrastructure efforts at Volvo Cars, building large-scale AI systems and teams inside a global OEM.
- Ronnie Jansson (CEO): Former leader in Volvo’s Advanced Analytics & AI organization and Interim Chief Data Officer, with a PhD in Astrophysics and two decades of experience in AI and data science.
- Leonard Aukea (CTO): Former Head of ML Engineering & Operations at Volvo Cars, responsible for AI infrastructure, tooling, and MLOps at scale.
Together, the founders bring a rare combination of deep technical expertise and automotive industry experience.
What’s Next for Skygrid
With this funding, Skygrid plans to:
- Advance technology for pilot-scale deployment readiness
- Cultivate OEM partnerships for early testing and use-case validation
- Expand team to scale product development
How Automotive Ventures Will Support Skygrid
Beyond capital, Automotive Ventures will leverage our network of OEMs, mobility startups, and industry partners to support Skygrid’s early deployments and strategic partnerships.
We will work closely with the founding team as they validate their initial use-cases and expand OEM relationships.
Closing Thoughts
We believe the next decade of mobility will be defined not just by electrification and autonomy, but by the emergence of new applications for software-defined vehicles. Skygrid is building the orchestration layer that can unlock this latent capacity and turn it into a new class of AI infrastructure.
We’re excited to partner with the Skygrid team on this journey.
Learn more about Skygrid.
