Kyte's $300M delivered-car-rental bet ended in 2025 with its fleet repossessed

Kyte was founded in San Francisco in 2019 to make renting a car as easy as ordering one: customers booked in an app and an employee delivered a car from Kyte's own fleet to their door. It pitched itself as the flexible, tech-first alternative to Hertz, Avis and Enterprise.

The model was capital-heavy from the start. After a $9M raise in 2021 and a $60M Series B in 2022, Kyte expanded to 14 US markets and borrowed to buy vehicles — $200M in debt arranged with Goldman Sachs and Ares Capital in 2022 and a further $250M agreement with Barclays and Waterfall Asset Management in March 2024. TechCrunch reported the company wanted to become the largest operator of shared, electrified and autonomous fleets.

The expansion outran the economics. Volk told TechCrunch in late 2024 that markets like Atlanta, Chicago, Boston and Washington DC could not generate free cash flow, that the team had explored selling the business, and that it instead cut 40–50% of staff to focus on San Francisco and New York, its two biggest markets with roughly 70% of revenue.

The retrenchment did not hold. Kyte fell behind on its loans in 2025, its main lender repossessed and liquidated the fleet, and after failing to raise rescue financing the board voted to wind down. Kyte sold its customer list to Turo in July 2025, entered California receivership in August, and shut down; customers with prebooked trips were told chargebacks might be their fastest route to a refund.