Plenty of startups are racing to make vehicle inspections faster, easier, and cheaper. Self Inspection, a startup based in San Diego, thinks it has all of them beat with its AI-powered service — and now it has convinced outside investors.
Self Inspection, founded in 2021, is about to announce Thursday it’s raised $3 million in seed round co-led by Costanoa Ventures and DVx Ventures, the firm run by former Tesla president Jon McNeill. Joining the round was Westlake Financial, which handles a couple of million vehicle transactions annually.
Karim Bousta, partner at DVx Ventures, believes the standard vehicle inspection process is ripe for innovation. Self Inspection’s technology “not only streamlines operations for auto lenders, dealerships and rental firms, but additionally sets a brand new benchmark for quality, reliability and a seamless digital experience within the $30 billion vehicle inspection market,” Bousta said in an announcement.
The seed round is validation of the tech the corporate has been working on for the previous few years, CEO Constantine Yaremtso told TechCrunch. Self Inspection already counts Avis and CarOffer (a digital wholesaler owned by CarGurus) as customers, together with Westlake Financial.
“Principally we’re going to start out expanding, growing, and scaling,” Yaremtso said concerning the funding.
Self Inspection has taken a much different path from UVEye, which recently raised $191 million for its AI-powered drive-through inspection technology.
Self Inspection only needs a smartphone camera, although its software can even leverage data pulled from a automotive’s OBD2 port.
The corporate trained its AI models on what it describes as “certainly one of the biggest datasets of damaged vehicles.” Those models can quickly detect damage and assess the severity, before generating a value estimate and “one of the crucial thorough vehicle inspection reports available within the industry.”
“What we deliver is definitely a totally detailed PDF report that you just would normally only get from a body shop, which can inform you what labor must be done on the damage, how much it costs to repair, what number of parts do you would like, and so forth,” Yaremtso said.
Self Inspection’s service is designed to be easy but configurable, which also sets it aside from competitors like Ravin, Yaremtso said.
In other words, Self Inspection’s software isn’t one-size-fits-all.
What which means for purchasers is access to a slick back-end configurator. As an example, if a fleet or vehicle marketplace desires to prioritize certain high-wear areas of a automotive, or add a step to make certain an EV’s charging cable is within the trunk, they’ll just drag and drop those in Self Inspection’s software.
Self Inspection can also be designed to be easier to make use of.
The software doesn’t require users to be a selected distance away from a automotive as they take photos or videos, like other services do. And for now, it’s not even a standalone app. Self Inspection integrates the software into its customers’ own workflows, and all vehicle inspections are done through a smartphone’s web browser — accessed after a user gets texted or emailed a link.
“Everyone has an excellent camera, everyone has an excellent phone, everyone knows the best way to capture photos. As soon as they receive text message or email, it’s easy to go,” Yaremtso said. “We’re trying to provide this tool to marketplaces, or banks, so anyone can inspect super simply and expedite the sales cycle process.”
