Porsche goes all in, acquires majority stake in Croatia’s Greyp Bikes

Designers of the 24/7 connected e-bike, Croatia’s Greyp has seen a majority stake acquisition by automotive, and increasingly mobility, giant Porsche. The investment will be used to accelerate further research and development in all fields of e-mobility and connected technology within Greyp. As part of the deal, Mate Rimac and other Greyp founders will retain their existing shares in the company. According to the shareholder's agreement, this transaction needs to be finalized by December 18th, 2021.

If the name Mate Rimac is ringing any bells, yes, he’s also the founder Rimac Automobili, a company that has seen significant investment from Porsche since 2018. Also, the $1 million car that Richard Hammond famously drove off an embankment while filming Amazon’s The Grand Tour. When Porsche fused Bugatti and Rimac, the Stuttgart firm also bought a 10% stake in Greyp.

Now there are a few interesting features about Greyp. One, the constantly connected, always-on features, something that a competitor could, and most probably will copy, but more of note, the private company can also boast a blockchain-based Public Offering.

The full investment cycle was complete on Neufund, from setting up their fundraising campaign in 2019, raising 1.4M EUR from over 1,000 investors, to conducting multiple corporate management activities such as shareholder resolutions on Blockchain. With this exit, shareholders will see a total of 1.7 million distributed, an estimated 20% ROI after just 33 months after investing.

“When we started our adventure with Greyp Bikes we had no idea what potential our community had to really make a difference, to make things happen. We are extremely proud of the diverse, globally spread group of investors that made our fully-compliant blockchain-based Public Offering on the Neufund platform work out,” commented Greyp Bikes’ CEO Kresimir Hlede.

The transaction is still subject to the approval of antitrust authorities and has not yet been formally completed.