Ekho Raises $17.3M from Activant, JPMorgan, Winnebago, YC

We’re excited to announce $17.3M in total funding, including a $15M Series A led by Activant Capital, with participation from JPMorgan Payments, Winnebago Industries, and Y Combinator.

Other investors include RiverPark Ventures, Westcott Investment Group, Funding Secured (the Tesla alumni fund), Steve Rayman (auto dealer group operator), Ryan Davis (cofounder, Backlot Cars), Billy Blaustein (former Tesla exec who launched Tesla Direct Delivery), Jimmy Douglas (former Tesla exec), Severin Hacker (CTO, Duolingo), Albert Cheng (former Head of Growth & Monetization, Duolingo), Bob Meese (Chief Business Officer, Duolingo), and Jorge Mazal (former CPO, Duolingo).

Ekho is the Shopify for titled vehicle dealerships and brands — starting with non-car vehicle segments like powersports and golf carts. We’re the only vehicle website and commerce platform that can actually sell vehicles end-to-end, as opposed to just collecting leads. Our 50-state sales processing engine, website layer, F&I engine, and licensure portfolio consolidate what was once a fragmented dealer stack, automating financing, titling, registration, tax remittance, insurance, fraud detection, sales docs, signature collection, and franchise compliance in all 50 states, all with one tool.

The Origin Story

Ekho didn’t start as a company; it started as two parallel childhoods shaped by machines, systems, and the urge to build — one in South Africa, the other in the American South — that eventually collided at Stanford.

Rowan’s early path: motorsports, dealerships, and Silicon Valley dreams

Rowan grew up in South Africa, where his early childhood involved weekend go karting, track days with dad, and hanging around the dealership his dad part-owned. He absorbed the rhythms of vehicle retail early: how deals actually closed, how messy the paperwork was, and how much of the workflow still depended on clipboards and DMV runs. His dad’s mix of motorsports passion and entrepreneurial energy sparked Rowan’s own love of vehicles — and planted the ambition to one day build technology in Silicon Valley.

He eventually made it to Stanford to study computer science, helped in part by becoming a world champion in persuasive speaking and ranking among the top debaters globally. That training gave him a rare skill: breaking down complex systems and communicating them clearly.

Chris’s early path: tinkering, machine learning, and dealership roots of his own

Chris grew up in Atlanta around a different but equally influential vehicle ecosystem. He was close with a multigenerational dealership family operating Nissan, Chevrolet, and classic car stores across the Southeast — the same group led by Steve Rayman, now an Ekho investor. Chris didn’t just watch from the sidelines; he liked to get his hands dirty. He spent a summer as a junior mechanic, learning real diagnostics and performing brake jobs, oil changes, AC repairs, and rotor resurfacing. He also worked at his dad’s lumber business and later at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where he conducted aerospace materials research. Those experiences gave him a ground-up understanding of mechanical systems, real shop workflows, and the operational realities behind vehicle retail.

But Chris’s real gravitational pull was toward computers, engineering, and the mathematical side of intelligence. He was the kid who took computers apart and built them back up to understand how they worked, wrote code in middle school, and gravitated toward machine learning long before it went mainstream. By the time he got to Stanford, he was laser-focused on AI — ultimately becoming a published NLP/AI research author.

Stanford: where two builders collide

Rowan and Chris met in Stanford’s computer science program and quickly became inseparable — as friends, as collaborators, and eventually as co-founders in waiting. They had an unusual cadence together: think of an idea in the morning, build a prototype before dinner, ship it to classmates the next day.

They built three or four products like this — social apps, student marketplaces, utility tools — some of which spread quickly around campus. Those experiments taught them something important: they could build fast, they could learn faster, and they thrived when solving messy, high-entropy problems together. By graduation, they weren’t asking if they’d start a company — just when and what.

Choosing to learn what “great” looks like

Instead of starting a company right away, they made a deliberate choice: learn from world-class operators.

Chris went deeper into machine learning and NLP research, joining Meta as a Machine Learning Engineer, during which time he published a paper on NLP and worked on systems-level AI problems that billions of people used. Rowan joined Duolingo as a product manager, working first on subscription monetization — pricing, paywalls, conversion optimization, and funnel mechanics that now brings in close to $1B annually— then later with an AI skunkworks team experimenting with early GPT-3 models to automate language-learning content.

Both paths compounded: Rowan mastered consumer growth and product velocity; Chris became an expert in applied AI and large-scale automation.

The insight takes shape

Nights and weekends, they kept working on ideas. A pattern emerged: in high-consideration, physical commerce categories — furniture, healthcare, luxury resale, and especially vehicles — the real bottleneck wasn’t discovery, it was the transaction.

Regulation, compliance, paperwork, financing, DMV workflows, taxes, insurance, fraud checks — a swirling constellation of requirements stitched together with outdated tools and offline processes.

Category-defining companies have solve this by building the transaction layer that they package into an operator-friendly system retailers can use to run their businesses:

• Shopify did it for e-commerce.
• ZocDoc for medical physicians.
• The RealReal for authenticated luxury resale.
• WayFair for furniture.
• Even Carvana built it for used cars — but as a vertically integrated marketplace, powering the transaction layer for only units they owned.

So Rowan and Chris asked: Where is there a massive, regulated commerce market where the “transaction OS” hasn’t been built yet, and where we have a real edge?

The answer was hiding in plain sight.

Finding the foothold

U.S. vehicle retail is a $1.7T market with the most fragmented transaction stack in consumer commerce: titling, registration, lien perfection, identity and insurance checks, fraud, taxes, financing, signatures, disclosures, and state-by-state compliance — all varying across 50 different DMVs.

YC partners and trusted advisors encouraged a “land and expand” strategy: start in a sub-segment structurally identical to autos, but underserved. Rowan and Chris saw a perfect entry point: non-car, light-duty segments — powersports, golf carts, marine, RV/travel trailer, outdoor power equipment.

Legally, these are all titled vehicle sales. The workflows rhyme. The compliance stack is similar. The tech is a decade behind. Competition was thinner.

The grind: building the 50-state compliance foundation

They went all in — working with the same attorneys who had advised Tesla, Carvana, and TrueCar. Over the course of 1.5 years, they built a licensure and compliance footprint across the U.S., one state at a time. It was brutal — every state, every nuance, every edge case — but by early 2024 they had enough coverage to launch the first production version of Ekho.

From there, the flywheel started.

Early traction and the dealer pull

Ekho quickly partnered with around 20 brands, including several publicly traded OEMs, and built a cracked team. They processed thousands of end-to-end vehicle sales nationwide and began integrating dealer networks into the flow.

And then something telling happened: Dealers started asking to run all of their transactions — online and in-store — through Ekho. They carried multiple brands and wanted one system for everything: financing, F&I, DMV work, taxes, insurance, signatures, fraud checks, and compliance.

That’s when the vision crystallized: Build the Shopify for titled vehicle sales — the end-to-end transaction infrastructure that consolidates an entire dealer stack into one tool and automates the workflows that make vehicle retail slow, manual, and offline.

Why Vehicle Sales Are Still Cumbersome and Offline

Even as buyers expect seamless buying experiences, most titled vehicle transactions still run on a patchwork of manual workflows inside the dealership. The problem isn’t a lack of “online checkout” tools — it’s that the full sales process is too fragmented, too regulated, and too operationally heavy to run through a single system.

Here are the structural reasons the industry hasn’t gone fully digital, and why dealerships still struggle with speed, throughput, and margin:

The sales workflow is deeply fragmented and manually orchestrated

Selling a vehicle means navigating identity checks, credit pulls, financing, insurance verification, tax calculation, lien perfection, titling, registration, state disclosures, signatures, fraud checks, and dealer-specific fees — often across multiple legacy systems that don’t talk to each other.

Every dealership ends up stitching together DMS tools, portals, PDFs, lender systems, and DMV processes by hand. The bottleneck isn’t online checkout — it’s that nothing unifies the workflow.

State-by-state compliance forces dealers into offline processes

Each state has its own rules for taxes, registration, titling, doc fees, disclosures, insurance requirements, and franchise law. Even well-run dealerships layer internal rules on top of that complexity — what can be charged, when forms must be used, which dealers can sell where, and what requires in-person oversight.

Most digital tools solve for small slices of the workflow, but none consolidate the process end-to-end, so staff still revert to manual steps even for in-store deals.

Profitability depends on backend products and in-person workflow sequencing

Dealers rely heavily on F&I products, warranties, accessories, and service packages to drive profitability. Historically, these upsells require manual timing, scripting, and sequencing — which doesn’t translate cleanly into siloed “digital retailing” add-ons.

The challenge isn’t that dealers don’t want digital transactions; it’s that digital tools haven’t respected the operational and revenue realities of the store.

Ekho: The Unified Operating System for Vehicle Sales

Ekho is the unified sales and automation platform for titled vehicles — powering in-store and online transactions through a single system that handles the compliance, coordination, and complexity behind every deal. Instead of stitching together portals, their website, lender tools, and DMV workflows, dealerships and OEMs run the entire sales process through one platform.

Behind the scenes, Ekho brings together:

• AI-driven workflow automation
  Automates credit checks, lender selection, insurance verification, taxes, titling, registration, lien perfection, fraud detection, disclosures, signatures, and more.
• A 50-state compliance and licensure engine
  Built with leading vehicle-sales compliance attorneys, ensuring every transaction — online or in-store — stays compliant across all 50 states and franchise rules.
• Deep integrations with the dealer ecosystem
  DMS, inventory feeds, lenders, F&I providers, insurance carriers, payment rails, OEM systems, and DMV infrastructure — all unified into one workflow.
• A modern, lightning-fast UI for both staff and shoppers
  Let buyers check out in minutes online or in-store, while staff can intervene, assist, or take over at any point in the flow.

The result?‍‍

Dealers close more deals — accessed via nationwide sales capabilities —with higher throughput, lower operational overhead, and better margins in-store— without adding headcount. OEMs and marketplaces get nationwide, compliant sales channels that route transactions through real dealers. And across every configuration, dealers stay at the center, turning inventory and maintaining backend revenue on every sale. Smart F&I engines, dynamic bundling, and integrated PG&A upsells mean digital and in-store flows can meet or exceed traditional profitability, while reducing the manual steps that slow deals down.

One Platform, Three Configurations

Ekho is built to support the entire industry through three products:

Ekho Dealer

For individual dealerships or dealer groups that want a single system for online and in-store sales — boosting throughput and margins while removing processing overhead.

Ekho Access

For newer entrant brands in the early innings of building a physical network that want to sell nationwide fast — with Ekho handling compliance, financing, taxes, titling, and registration in all 50 states.

Ekho Omni

For OEMs, marketplaces, and distributors managing dealer networks — powering transactions on brand websites or dealer sites, while keeping dealers central to the sale, revenue, and customer experience.

Backed by Industry Leaders

This raise was led by Activant Capital, a research-led firm with a proven track record backing commerce infrastructure.

"Everyone knows the vehicle-buying experience needs to change—Tesla has set the bar and there is no going back on consumer expectations. But this is a deeply complex transaction to digitize. What Ekho has built is staggering in both scope and execution, and it shows what a killer team leveraging AI can really do. Brands and dealers are leaning in, consumers are responding, and it’s clear they’re setting a new standard "

Andrew Steele, Partner at Activant

We’re also thrilled to welcome JPMorgan Payments to the table.

“We are excited to support Ekho in redefining the vehicle purchase experience. As the payments ecosystem continues to evolve within the broader shift to a digital economy, Ekho’s innovative approach aligns with our commitment to powering more seamless and efficient commerce and payment experiences for our clients and their customers.”

Jason Tiede, Global Head of Corporate Development & Partnerships, J.P. Morgan Payments

Winnebago Industries also joined the round.

Real Results, Real Volume

In our first 12 months of live sales, we’ve already:

• Enabled tens of millions in partner revenue
• Powered sales for publicly traded OEMs and dealer networks across the country
• Seen shoppers complete purchases in minutes—including financing, paperwork, and insurance

Ekho is helping OEMs test new markets without needing to spin up dealer infrastructure. We’re helping dealers cut overhead and close more deals. And we’re unlocking the kind of seamless experience today’s buyers expect—without forcing anyone to compromise.

What’s Next

We’re just getting started — and the next chapter is all about dealers.

This raise allows us to invest even more deeply in the parts of the platform that matter most to dealership operators: faster in-store workflows, richer F&I and PG&A tooling, deeper DMS and lender integrations, and even more automation across the back office. Our goal is simple: give every dealership in America a single system that increases throughput, improves margins, and reduces operational drag — without adding headcount.

We’re also expanding our nationwide compliance and licensing engine so dealers can confidently sell to more buyers, in more states, with less manual review. And we’re doubling down on the tools that help dealers turn inventory faster: smarter lead routing, higher-converting websites, unified online + in-store checkout, and real-time sales processing.

At the same time, we’re strengthening our support for OEMs, marketplaces, and dealer groups — helping them roll out dealer-connected checkout on brand sites, unify buying experiences across networks, and create new high-intent sales channels that drive volume directly to their retailers.

We recently welcomed Mike Cunningham — former VP at Piaggio (Vespa, Aprilia, Moto Guzzi), Triumph, and Zero Motorcycles, and a top-100 dealership owner for 25 years before that — to help with Business Development.

“Ekho is building what this industry has needed for decades — it’s why I sought them out and came out of retirement to join full-time. What this team is doing is truly transformational. It has the potential to become the backbone of the next era of vehicle retail, where OEMs, dealers, and shoppers all win.”

Mike Cunningham, Business Development at Ekho

If you’re a dealership or dealer group looking to grow sales and increase throughput, margins, and operational efficiency — we’d love to talk.

If you’re an OEM, marketplace, or dealer website provider looking to unify online and in-store sales across your dealer network — we’d love to talk.

If you’re a new entrant brand looking to launch nationwide sales quickly while building your physical network — we’d love to talk.

And if you’re an engineer, designer, salesperson, or operator who wants to rebuild the transaction layer of a $1.7T industry — we’re hiring.

To our dealers, partners, investors, and team: thank you for building the future of vehicle commerce with us.

— Rowan & Chris
Co-founders, Ekho