Estonian Trind Ventures Fuels Aampere’s EV Resale Reinvention

• Tallinn-based Trind Ventures leads Aampere’s  EUR 1.6M round to scale the startup’s AI-driven used EV marketplace across Europe
• The team pivoted from C2C to C2B model, solving fragmentation and inefficiency in used EV trade
• The platform offers fast, transparent, cross-border EV selling with real-time pricing and 48-hour offers
• The investment accelerates expansion, sustainability impact, and Aampere’s goal to become Europe’s go-to EV resale platform

This October, the Estonian VC fund Trind Ventures became the lead investor in Aampere’s Seed round of investment. Ampere is the German online marketplace for used EVs. The round amounted to EUR 1.6M and was joined by GIMIC Ventures.

The Industry Expertise Behind the Founding Team

Ampere’s co-founder and CEO Florian Reister comes from a background in automotive engineering, working on technology, development, and the practical realities behind building and scaling mobility. In 2022, it became obvious to him that the used-EV market was heading straight toward a structural problem: rising volumes, lacking standards, and a resale process completely disconnected from what customers actually needed. Alongside, he saw how the second-life potential of EVs got wasted simply because the right infrastructure and user experience wasn’t built around it.

Convinced that he had the technical understanding, the systematic thinking, and the industry insight to build something that actually works at scale, he enlisted Niko Schmidt as CGO and Maximilian Rost as CPO in the Aampere founding team. Mr Schmidt brings a strong sustainability and innovation mindset and previous founder experience. He drives the commercial side of the platform. Mr Rost, meanwhile, is a product builder who turns user needs into a seamless product experience.

‘The founding team is fully aligned on the mission and values behind Aampere: accelerating e-mobility by completely rethinking how used EVs should be traded across Europe. Our firm conviction that a strong and efficient used EV market was essential for broader adoption.became a core driver for me personally and for the team as a whole,’ Mr Reister tells ITKeyMedia.

Early Growth and Pivoting to C2B

Aampere initially started as a C2C marketplace where private buyers and sellers could trade electric vehicles. Soon enough, the co-founders realized that the real leverage was elsewhere and decided to pivot to a C2B model in 2023. The focus shifted to private sellers on the supply side and dealerships on the demand side. Another realization came at the same time: a Europe-wide setup was essential to deliver a value proposition that could disrupt the market.

‘The work on the operational backbone was intense, but it paid off. Sellers now get a binding offer for their EV within 48 hours and benefit from the highest price across several European countries instead of dealing with a market that is analogue, fragmented and inefficient. By 2025 we were moving more than 100 EVs per month, expanded our seller base into Austria and built out the dealership side across BeNeLux and the Nordic markets,’ Mr Reister shares.

Market Fragmentation and Legacy Challenges

According to the CEO, the European market for used electric vehicles is still highly fragmented and often analog, characterized by opaque processes, manual handling, and isolated national solutions, because the entire industry is armed with old tools to react to a new reality.

‘The used car market has always been slow to change. It is built on thousands of local dealerships, national marketplaces and manual processes that worked for combustion engines but simply do not fit the dynamics of electric vehicles. EVs move differently across borders, price gaps between countries are bigger, and the technology behind the cars requires a different level of transparency and trust. On top of that the typical EV customer expects a modern, digital and seamless experience when selling or buying. None of that is reflected in the traditional market. It is trying to solve new problems with ICE era logic, and that is why it is stuck,’ Mr Reister explains.

Aampere’s Competitive Edge

‘One of the biggest surprises for us is how deeply the traditional market is still locked into the old way of doing things. The inefficiencies are obvious, but the industry has been normalizing them for decades,’ Mr Schmidt adds.

He lists ampere’s key standout points:

• ‘Our first big difference is that we insist on staying asset-light. The classic market buys cars, parks them somewhere and waits. This creates added cost, risk and slow turnover. Conversely, we move EVs across Europe faster, more flexibly, and far more scalably.
• Speed is another point where the legacy market is completely off. It can easily take months to sell a car on traditional platforms while on Aampere, sellers get a binding offer as soon as within 48 hours.
• Convenience is another barrier. Selling a car has always been a hassle, so people expect pain. We remove that with real-time valuation, binding offer in 48 hours, digital payment and pick up at the seller’s doorstep. It is the experience the EV customer expects but can’t get anywhere else.
• Transparency remains a massive problem in the used car space. A lot of sellers and even many dealers accept intransparency as the norm. On Aampere, dealers see exactly what they are bidding on because our data capture is strict and consistent. On the seller side, this brings better prices and a frictionless process.
• Finally, we are AI-first. While the traditional market is still debating how to digitize documents, we are building workflows that learn every day. It improves the experience, reduces manual work, and makes the whole model scale much faster than anything the classic players are doing.’

Real-Time Valuation, Transparency, and Trust Through Expertise

Transparency and trust indeed represent a concern of many users, seeing how Aampere uses a self-learning algorithm to price vehicles. Mr Riestler insists that the platform is transparent about the EV, about every part of the process and even about how our algorithms work at all times. The team is prepared to guide every customer through the entire journey.

Aampere’s real-time value indication serves as an example, allowing the seller to receive a forecasted price after entering only a few data points. The platform explains exactly what that number means and reminds that it is not a guaranteed offer, but a data-driven estimate of what the vehicle could achieve in the auction, to set expectations appropriately and avoid any confusion about algorithmic recommendations.

Overall, used car sales generally carry legacy reputational nuances and challenge trust. It apparently requires specific branding or UX choices to signal transparency and trustworthiness to consumers who might still associate used cars with friction or hidden risks. With this in mind, Aampere built its customer service team of genuine car experts who provide professional, well-grounded support so sellers rest assured their questions get handled by specialists rather than generalists, which materially increases trust in the process. Adding to the platform’s value proposition, this points to the team’s customer-centered approach that reveals through visible social proof, with more than 200 Google reviews at a 5-star rating.

Handling Cross-Border Complexity

Cross-border used car trade naturally adds to taxes, registration, and compliance complexity that Aampere has to tackle. Internally, the startup insists on positioning itself as a tech and AI company that pushes technical boundaries and process efficiency to a different level. For customers, however, the tech component is the engine behind a user-centered, end-to-end digital service. The platform doesn’t just mediate EVs but actually buys them for one second, i.e a seller sells their vehicle directly to Aampere GmbH (a German limited liability company). Dealing with one clear legal entity shields the seller from cross-border tax, registration, and compliance concerns. Instead, Aampere handles the downstream sale and the regulatory work across European markets.

‘Some import-related steps are handled together with our dealership partners. Some need more support, others run their own standardized processes,’ Mr Reister remarks.

Aampere’s Part in Sustainability and Circular Economy

Simplifying the used EVs trade process apparently extends the lifetime of those vehicles, therefore supporting circular economy goals in a tangible way. This makes it natural to integrate sustainability metrics, e.g. avoided CO2 emissions.

‘Since EVs have higher CO2 emissions during production but significantly lower ones in use, keeping them on the road longer has a direct environmental benefit. We already track metrics such as the extended lifecycle of vehicles and avoided emissions per transaction, but we will definitely include more detailed sustainability KPIs in future investor reporting as we scale,’ Mr Schmidt clarifies.

Funds to Fuel Scaling in 2026

The fresh injection of EUR 1.6M from Trind Ventures and GIMIC Ventures is meant to help Aampere accelerate product development and expand its European market presence beyond Scandinavia and the Benelux region.

More specifically, the Aampere team expects to put a lot of energy into making every process behind the platform utmost scalable and ready for rapid growth in 2026. This includes launching value-added services that strengthen the lock-in effect for the dealer network and deepen collaboration across the ecosystem. Expanding both the supply and demand side will become the company’s long-term focus over the next five years during which Aampere intends to become the number one platform for used EVs across Europe.

‘We’re taking it step by step, one country at a time, because our goal isn’t just to enter new markets but to really understand them and build strong local relationships with our customers,’ Mr Reister adds.

‘Aampere is an exceptional team, built in a very short time and combining strong customer focus with operational efficiency. We are firmly confident that Aampere is poised to scale successfully across Europe and excited to support the team on this journey,’ Trind Ventures co-founder and partner Taavi Lepmets states.

Aampere’s approach indeed exemplifies how technology and user-centric design can bring the lacking transparency, speed, and efficiency to a traditionally slow and fragmented market. By digitizing and streamlining the resale of used EVs across Europe, the company not only unlocks value for sellers and dealers but also contributes to sustainability by extending the lifecycle of electric vehicles. In doing so, Aampere is setting a new standard for the future of e-mobility and demonstrating the critical role marketplaces play in accelerating the broader adoption of electric transportation.