Goodyear Ventures

A venture arm built on a tire maker's footprint

Goodyear Ventures is the venture investing arm of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. It looks for startups working on emerging mobility technology and takes part at stages from seed through to growth. The aim stated on its pages is to move transport forward in ways that make it safer and more sustainable, and that make everyday connections easier, building on a company that says it has been pushing mobility forward for more than 120 years.

What a startup gets besides capital

The firm stresses that a partnership means more than a cheque and lists the assets it puts behind portfolio companies. Founders can work under the reach of the Goodyear name. They can draw on a retail and service network that the parent is shaping to support electric and autonomous vehicles. They can also tap the company's work on intelligent tires for those vehicles, and its product and solutions design experience with new and emerging vehicle makers.

Depth of experience and presence

The company points to a history tied to milestones in transport, from the first fleets to tires used on the moon and on to sensor-equipped products. It says it operates and sells in nearly every country and makes about 160 million tires a year. Goodyear Ventures presents that scale as a practical resource: introductions, field knowledge and a way to test ideas in real markets.

Founders it wants to meet

The invitation is to entrepreneurs tackling pressing problems in how people and goods move, whether through better safety, cleaner operation or smoother journeys. The site invites them to get in touch if their work improves mobility in one of the listed ways.

Portfolio

The portfolio pages mention companies across autonomous trucking, electric vehicle charging, battery monitoring, vehicle services, wireless networks and road surface sensing. They include a driverless middle-mile trucking company, a mobile vehicle servicing business, an electric vehicle battery analytics firm and a company working on road condition detection software. These examples show how broad the fund's definition of mobility is, and they match the stated interest in the technologies, services and experiences around vehicles rather than in vehicles alone.