Israeli electric vehicle start-up Driivz announced last week its acquisition by Gilbarco Veeder-Root, an American company that provides technology and equipment for refuelling and charging electric vehicles in convenience stores and commercial vehicle fleets. The American company will pay about $220 million for the Israeli start-up.

Some investors have made some nice returns…

Driivz has developed a cloud-based operating system for the benefit of charging network operators, car manufacturers and auxiliary equipment manufacturers. Their system is essentially a solution for managing all aspects of the deployment of electric vehicles: car charging, account management and of course billing the driver for the charge. The Israeli start-up has developed the system for service providers in the field of electric vehicles, such as car fleets, refuelling chains, and convenience stores around the world. The system also includes an app for drivers. Driivz's products support more than 130 different types of charging stations.

The acquiring company, which also invested in Driivz during their last two rounds of fundraising, the most recent of which took place last March (according to Pitchbook data), will use the start-up’s technology to expand its solutions for vehicle fleet and endpoint applications, and remove barriers to make the electric car infrastructure, development, and management more efficient.

An Israeli car manufacturer also invested in Driivz, along with Volvo in the last round of investments, and saw a 3.5 time return on its investment in less than a year. The British company Centrica, which invested in the last three rounds and even implemented Driivz technology back in 2018, has since also seen a nice return on its investment; it will see a return of about 5 times the original investment in the relatively short time of 3 years.

Since being founded in 2012 by Tzachi Merkur and Doron Frenkel (CEO), Driivz has raised $37 million from investors and according to Pitchbook, its most recent reported funding round in 2020 was at a market value of $43 million. It's fair to say that the amount it was purchased at is a nice jump from the previous company value. Driivz employs about 80 people, and we were told by the company that everyone will remain in their positions, and the company will continue to operate in its current form.