For decades, the wholesale used car market in Europe has remained stubbornly offline – fragmented networks, opaque pricing, cross-border friction, and slow, manual processes that constrained dealer efficiency and profitability.
CarOnSale is redefining that reality by building the digital operating system for B2B auto sales across Europe and is emerging as a category leader in one of the largest markets in Europe worth $180bn of trade annually.
We’re proud to announce our €70 million Series C growth investment in CarOnSale, Europe’s leading digital auction platform for used vehicles. This round was led by Northzone and will support the company’s vision of transforming the continent’s wholesale auto trade into a fully integrated, transparent, and technology-driven ecosystem.
Founded in 2018 and led by Tom, Max, Fabian and Oguz, a uniquely complementary team blending product, operational, and domain expertise, CarOnSale has evolved from a digital auction platform into a full-stack operating system for car dealerships. At present, the company powers every step of the transaction: inspections, pricing intelligence, credit decisioning, payments, logistics, and fulfillment.
Today, the company supports thousands of dealerships and powers the auction platforms of leading OEMs including Mercedes-Benz. Last year, CarOnSale completed its first acquisition, bringing a leading dealership software provider into the fold and further expanding its end-to-end product offering.
At Northzone, we’ve long held a thesis around vertical B2B marketplaces and operating platforms for small businesses, having led a $50m Series C investment in Nivoda, a leading global jewellery marketplace, last year. CarOnSale embodies many of the core characteristics we look for in outliers that we outlined in our recent piece here, and is already establishing itself as a category leader in European used car sales infrastructure.
Sanjot Malhi, Partner at Northzone, comments: “CarOnSale is building a category defining pan-European platform in one the deepest markets in the continent. Their end-to-end software is transformative for small businesses and the world’s largest OEMs alike. It’s our privilege to partner with Tom and the team, and believe the company has the potential to bring AI to an archaic industry and create a truly generational outcome.”
We’re thrilled to support Tom, Max, Fabian, Oguz, and the entire CarOnSale team as they build the trusted infrastructure for Europe’s next-generation auto trade.