Sheryl Sandberg has led a $10 million investment into Self Inspection, a San Diego-based startup that is also backed by former Tesla president Jon McNeill’s DVx Ventures.
The startup, founded in 2021, has spent the last few years trying to disrupt the vehicle inspection process by making it possible to properly assess body damage on a car with as little tech as a smartphone camera. Self Inspection told TechCrunch that it has already completed more than 1 million vehicle inspections for rental fleets, automotive finance companies, auctions, and marketplaces, with Stellantis’ financial services arm using the platform for corporate-owned vehicles and lease-end inspections.
“The biggest technology companies are built by transforming industries that are massive, essential, and ready for change,” Sandberg said in a statement to TechCrunch. “Vehicle condition touches billions of dollars in automotive decisions every year, yet the data remains fragmented. That is changing. We believe Self Inspection will build the system of record that the automotive industry needs.”
The funding round was led by her family office, Sandberg Bernthal Venture Partners, with strategic investment from tire distributor U.S. AutoForce and automotive lender Westlake Financial. Early-stage funds Costanoa Ventures, Rebellion Ventures, and BrightCap Ventures also invested.
Self Inspection is one of a number of startups trying to use AI to modernize the automotive industry. Toma and Flai are trying to improve dealership communication with voice agents. BidBus is making it possible for dealerships to competitively bid on privately owned cars.
Other startups like UVeye have taken a bigger, infrastructure-level approach to modernizing vehicle inspections.
But a big part of Self Inspection’s pitch is simplicity. The company sells its software to customers like Stellantis, and that software allows the customer to send a link to anyone with a smartphone so they can upload photos of a car. Self Inspection’s software guides the user through the process, making sure the whole car is covered.
The company is basically leveraging the fact that “everyone has a good camera” and “knows how to capture photos,” CEO Constantine Yaremtso told TechCrunch last year.
From there, the photos get compared to what Self Inspection has described as “one of the largest datasets of damaged vehicles” to detect the presence and severity of any damage. After that, the startup’s software spits out a cost estimate and a detailed inspection report.
“What we deliver is actually a fully detailed PDF report that you would normally only get from a body shop, which will tell you what labor needs to be done on the damage, how much it costs to repair, how many parts do you need, and so on,” Yaremtso said. He added that Self Inspection can also pull data from an OBD2 computer for even more detailed information.
Self Inspection told TechCrunch that its platform has already helped its customers reduce their costs by over $80 million and save more than 300,000 operational hours. The startup plans to use the new funding to build more products, reach more enterprise customers, and expand to Europe.