By: Jiten Behl and Joe Fath

Purchasing essential, expensive items shouldn’t be a terrible experience. But buying a car — second only to a home in terms of cost and impact on daily life — still ranks among one of the worst consumer experiences today. 

That’s because the $1.2T domestic auto retail market, which is the largest segment of the retail economy in the United States, runs on a cobbled-together system of manual processes, outdated third-party software, and siloed operations. This is becoming more challenging for an industry where both the products and the market itself are continually becoming more complex — especially in the used car market, where four cars are sold for every single new car sold in the U.S. Wave after wave of progress across both vehicle technology and supportive services has created even more fragmentation and friction, while a lack of transparency has eroded trust and caused both consumers and retail operators to lose more time, money, and patience than ever. 

This isn’t a problem that can be fixed just by putting transactions or other discrete parts of the physical dealership online. It takes a systems-level approach to the problem and a full-stack approach to the solution in order to overhaul the U.S. auto retail market in a way that brings every aspect of the sector into the modern era — and that’s exactly what Ever is doing. 

Ever has put every function of used auto retail operations under a single hood, replacing the numerous legacy systems that have historically created friction and limited flexibility for both buyers and sellers. The company is specializing in electric vehicles and building a proprietary, AI-native operating system to automate and orchestrate the hundreds of steps that go into vehicle sourcing, pricing, listing, merchandising, sales, and more. This vertically-integrated platform creates major advantages: Customers benefit from a more flexible, transparent and affordable experience while the auto retail operation becomes exponentially more productive and scalable. In an unforgiving industry where even small inefficiencies pile up and eat into already-tight margins, this is a huge advantage. 

Eclipse is excited to be partnered with Ever as they transform the EV retail market, and is proud to be leading their $31 million Series A. 

Moreover, while Ever was designed to digitize the entirety of auto retail operations, its platform extends into the real world. If customers choose to, they can move seamlessly between online and in-person experiences — by buying or selling online, completing a transaction in person, or switching between the two at any point in the process.The company currently has live operations in San Francisco and thousands of customers across 40 states through its online platform.  

This omnichannel, AI-native approach goes far beyond what earlier online retail platforms were designed to do. While digital marketplaces represented a major step forward from the traditional dealership model, they were never built to support the complex, omnichannel customer journeys or to optimize the entire operation as a single, integrated system. Today, advances in AI and large-scale reasoning and automation systems make it possible to not just vertically integrate each disparate part of the retail process, but to apply levers that fundamentally transform the economics of the business. We’ve seen similar evolutions in the past: Consider how app-based ride-hailing platforms redefined the taxi industry in the mobile-first era, and now AV-native, vertically-integrated companies like Waymo are optimizing the entire mobility stack. The auto retail sector is similarly massive and open for innovation — and Ever is poised to become the Waymo of its industry.

It takes a unique team to reinvent this highly competitive market, and Ever is led by an impressive group hailing from companies including Uber, Rivian, Tesla, Lyft, and Shopify. Co-founded and led by Lasse-Mathias Nyberg,  TJ Casner, and Maximilian Quertermous, Ever’s deep experience across automotive, finance, consumer technology, and AI has allowed the team to take a first-principles approach to completely reinventing the industry. 

That cross-functional expertise is how Ever has built something people want, in a way that completely reinvents the business dynamics, in a market that is set to grow exponentially. Electric vehicles make up an increasing portion of the overall auto retail sector, expanding far beyond the established hotspots like the Bay Area and Southern California. The second-hand EV market is especially seeing explosive growth, and Ever is playing a major role in growing the market while positioning the company as the de-facto operator of the sector. 

We’ve come to expect advanced tools and sophisticated frameworks to guide us through the most consequential decisions we make as consumers and operators. We certainly deserve them to power the buying and selling of products that play an outsized role in everyday American life. 

More on today’s news from TechCrunch.

Follow Eclipse on LinkedIn or sign up for Eclipse’s Newsletter for the latest on building the New Economy