Self Inspection, an AI-based platform for the automotive inspections market, announced that it closed a $3 million seed round. Costanoa Ventures and DVx Ventures co-led the round, which was participated in by Westlake Financial, one of the largest financial institutions for automotive loans.
Millions of cars require inspection after a rental, to be sold after a lease return, trade or repossession, or to create an accurate condition report to accelerate a sale. If one inspection is not done correctly or at all, it can result in arbitration when a car is sold (or increased rental fees), reversing transactions and costing thousands of dollars in expenses and time.
Self Inspection provides standardized condition reports in minutes with increased real-time accuracy, a significant improvement compared to the current manual process. Key highlights from the company’s progress so far:
1.) Avis, the third largest rental car provider in the U.S., uses it to facilitate rental inspections and transactions. Alaska Rent A Car, an Avis Licensee, is the first state to fully deploy it.
2.) CarOffer, a leading digital wholesale platform, part of CarGurus (CARG), uses Self Inspection as part of its vehicle appraisal process.
3.) Westlake Financial, the largest privately held finance company in the automotive industry, handles over a million vehicle transactions annually and now exclusively relies on Self Inspection to deliver condition reports to dealers during trade-ins, re-marketing, and repossession processes.
Most inspections require an on-site visit can take days to weeks and often lack critical information such as subtle defects, cost estimates, etc. And Self Inspection’s AI-based inspection platform quickly creates a detailed report of the entire vehicle, including exterior, interior, tires and mechanical components, with 99% accuracy based on advances in computer vision and AI models.
Self Inspection is more accurate than current photo-based models, which cannot effectively detect subtle defects or mechanical issues. In contrast, Self Inspection’s proprietary AI models are trained on one of the largest datasets of damaged vehicles to quickly detect and assess damage severity. And this data is used to provide detailed cost estimates for repairs, resulting in one of the most thorough vehicle inspection reports available in the industry.
Yaremtso, a Ukrainian immigrant, founded the company in 2021 with former leaders from Apple, NVIDIA and Coinbase who brings significant AI and automotive experience. And Self Inspection plans to use the funds to expand its engineering team in both Ukraine and the U.S. to accelerate product development and enhance machine learning algorithms to optimize and expand use cases.
KEY QUOTES:
“Vehicle inspections are expensive, can take weeks to complete, and rely on outdated methods with a significant margin of error. Slow, inaccurate and expensive inspections create obstacles and a poor experience in millions of mobile transactions. Our tech completes inspections with greater speed, accuracy and customization, which can save financial institutions millions of dollars and speed up a sales process by weeks.”
- Constantine Yaremtso, founder and CEO of Self Inspection
“We are thrilled to be partnering with the Self Inspection team to bring this product to life. Westlake Financial is already integrating Self Inspection across our business units, and have seen significant value to detect and assess issues, as well as substantial savings that we can pass to our consumers. We need to maintain accurate records of a vehicle’s condition to ensure correct valuations, manage risk effectively, prevent fraud and determine fair prices for our customers. Self Inspection allows us to streamline and standardize our processes, ensuring accurate vehicle assessments with precise, data-backed reports at scale.”
- Ian Anderson, president of Westlake Financial
“We are excited to support the Self Inspection team in their mission to transform the vehicle inspection industry through AI. The traditional vehicle inspection process is ripe for innovation, and Self Inspection’s solution addresses a critical need by providing accurate, efficient and scalable inspections. This technology not only streamlines operations for auto lenders, dealerships and rental companies but also sets a new benchmark for quality, reliability and a seamless digital experience in the $30 billion vehicle inspection market.”
- Karim Bousta, partner at DVx Ventures and automotive industry expert
“Innovation that can modernize a massive traditional industry, like automotive, and solve a critical need through AI is poised for long-term growth. Self Inspection built a reliable AI-powered vehicle inspection platform that ensures data-backed trust every time a vehicle changes hands. This will prove radically useful as the industry evolves.”
- Greg Sands, managing partner at Costanoa Ventures
