Confirmed: Hailo sells 60% of company to Daimler as it merges with MyTaxi
Some more movement and consolidation is afoot in the on-demand transportation industry, specifically in Europe. Today, Hailo is announcing that it has sold 60% of its company to Mercedes-Benz owner Daimler …
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the moment Daimler stopped watching Uber eat European taxi hailing and bought its own seat at the table: taking 60% of [[a:Hailo|Hailo]] and folding it into MyTaxi creates a Daimler-controlled challenger across the markets where both apps already operated.
The move fits a pattern the related coverage traces end to end — Daimler went on to back Taxify's $1B round, lead Via's $250M European expansion, and strike a self-driving Mercedes deal with Uber, before merging fourteen services with BMW into five joint ventures. The 2016 Hailo stake is where that portfolio strategy started.
First-order effects
- Hailo's existing shareholders cede majority control to Daimler, and the combined MyTaxi-Hailo operation becomes an OEM-backed rival to Uber in European cities rather than two fragmented local apps.
Second-order effects
- Daimler's rivals read the same disruption threat: BMW buys out Sixt's DriveNow stake and the two German automakers ultimately pool their mobility bets into shared ventures, while Daimler keeps hedging with stakes in Taxify and Via instead of relying on MyTaxi alone.
Third-order effects
- The arc from this stake to BMW and Mercedes-Benz selling FreeNow to Lyft for €175M in 2025 suggests carmaker-owned ride-hailing never compounded into a standalone winner — the structural lesson is that OEMs ended up as minority financial backers of US platforms rather than operators of their own networks.
The trend: Legacy automakers responded to ride-hailing disruption by acquiring and consolidating taxi apps across Europe, then gradually retreating to investment positions as independent platforms consolidated the market.