The startup Also, which spun out of the American electric vehicle maker Rivian less than two years ago, has raised another 150 million dollars (around 138 million euros) in a Series D round. That brings the total it has raised since founding to 455 million dollars - for a company still struggling to get its first bicycles to customers.

The round was led by Prysm Capital, with participation from existing investors Eclipse, Greenoaks and MVP Ventures. The money, the company says, goes towards accelerating the development of autonomous driving technology and „advancing multiple autonomous form factors simultaneously\". In other words: Also no longer wants to be an electric bicycle company.

„We backed Rivian early because we saw the opportunity behind beautifully designed, vertically integrated electric trucks, vans and SUVs,\" says Jay Park, co-founder and managing partner at Prysm Capital, adding that Also is applying the same approach to smaller-format vehicles.

That is investor logic worth reading carefully. Park is not buying a product - he is buying a repeat of a previous story in smaller dimensions. And Rivian's story, for the investors who came in later, did not end well.

The chronology is instructive. Also began as an internal project at Rivian, driven by founder and chief executive RJ Scaringe's interest in small vehicles. The team gathered people from Apple, Google, Specialized and Tesla, spun out in 2025 with 150 million dollars, and in October presented its first products - a 4,500-dollar two-wheeler called the TM-B and two four-wheelers, one of which will go to Amazon. A few months ago the company raised 200 million led by Greenoaks, with a strategic investment from DoorDash and a multi-year agreement for autonomous delivery vehicles.

Among all those numbers there is one sentence the announcement does not emphasise: the first edition of the bicycle ran months late and is only now starting to reach buyers. Deliveries of the other models are announced for autumn. A company that has raised close to half a billion dollars has still not solved the problem of delivering one bicycle - and is already funding autonomous vehicles.

Rivian is not far from all of this. It holds a minority stake, and Scaringe sits on Also's board. The company has said before that it will lean on the carmaker's technology, sales network and scale. So the independence is formal more than substantive - which is entirely logical when the founder of one company sits on the board of the other.