Product News Briefs: Cake Crumbles While VanMoof Revives
Innovative Light Electric Vehicle Brand Cake Files for Bankruptcy
Electric motorcycle startup Cake filed for bankruptcy February 1, Cake CEO Stefan Ytterborn has confirmed.
We previously reported about some of Cake’s light electric vehicle products here and here.
More recently, in October 2023 we announced here that Sydney-headquartered Deus Ex Machina had agreed to become the exclusive Australian distributor for Cake.
The future of Cake is uncertain at the time of writing, as ambiguous comments from Ytterborn said he was looking for a solution “in one format or another” suggesting hope of a buy-out or restructure.
Cake raised a US$14 million (A$21.4 million) Series A in 2019. It followed that with a US$60 million (A$91.8 million) Series B round in 2021 led by Swedish pension fund AMF. The capital was meant to fund manufacturing facilities in Europe, North America and Asia and to scale up its retail capabilities, the company said at the time.
VanMoof Rises
Another high profile European bike brand that had raised about A$300 million in total within a decade, before going bankrupt last year was VanMoof.
In news that we had previously missed, it was announced later last year that electric scooter brand Lavoie had acquired VanMoof out of administration for “tens of millions” of dollars.
“With its next generation of e-bikes, smart technology, innovative design, and loyal customer base, VanMoof and Lavoie fit together perfectly,” said Eliott Wertheimer, Lavoie CEO, in a statement. “VanMoof has 190,000 customers globally and our commitment is to continue to keep those riders on the road whilst we stabilise and efficiently grow the VanMoof business and continue to develop its world-class products.”
London-based Lavoie is a division of McLaren Applied, which itself was formerly a part of the McLaren Group that builds parts for the McLaren F1 and other vehicles. It was divested during the lean years of Covid-19, and it is now wholly-owned by Greybull Capital.
Lavoie says that the acquisition is part of its strategy to build out its urban mobility business. That will include e-bikes as well as scooters.
“The acquisition of VanMoof underscores our commitment to strengthen and grow our world-leading e-mobility business. We see a huge potential to transform the way people travel around the congested cities of the world in a more active and enjoyable way,” said Nick Fry, McLaren Applied chairman, in a statement.
“This exciting deal helps us to accelerate global growth, allowing us to increase the scale and quality of products and services we can offer to our customers. We are fully committed to being leaders in manufacturing premium e-mobility products that are redefining the category with each ride.”
The information for the Cake and VanMoof articles was first published on TechCrunch.com