VW invests $300M in Uber rival Gett in new ride-sharing partnership
The on-demand transportation service continues to heat up, and today the spotlight is shining on a New York startup whose business is based primarily in Europe. Gett, a cab-hailing startup with operations across some 60 cities …
Context & Ripple Effects
Gett enters this deal from a position of sharpened focus: a year earlier it shifted its global marketing spend behind a New York corporate-service push (launching its corporate offering in New York within weeks), betting business travel against Uber's consumer scale. The Volkswagen check is the OEM answer to that gap — a legacy carmaker buying exposure to on-demand mobility rather than building it.
The timing matters for what follows. Within a year, Gett converts this war chest into consolidation among Uber's smaller challengers, confirming a $200M acquisition of rival Juno (Gett's purchase of Juno) as the also-rans combine rather than fight alone.
First-order effects
- Gett gains a $300M balance-sheet cushion and an automotive partner across its roughly 60-city footprint, letting it fund growth without conceding control the way venture-only rounds might.
- Volkswagen buys a seat inside ride-sharing software operations it has not built itself, making Gett its vehicle for on-demand mobility.
Second-order effects
- With fresh capital, Gett becomes the consolidator among Uber's weaker rivals, absorbing Juno for $200M instead of competing against it — a direct knock-on of the funding.
- Ride-hailing pricing pressure in Gett's European strongholds now carries a subsidized competitor backed by industrial money, forcing incumbents to treat OEM-backed players as durable rather than transient.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points toward automakers outsourcing their software-mobility strategies through minority stakes — a structure that concentrates risk: when the platform cannot match Uber, Lyft, and Didi, the bet turns into a write-down, which is exactly where VW landed when it moved to write off over $300M of the Gett investment two years later (VW's planned write-off of its Gett stake).
The trend: Legacy automakers are buying into ride-hailing startups as a shortcut to mobility services, a strategy that trades engineering risk for valuation risk on someone else's platform.