Pinewood Acquires Minority Stake in Dubai’s AI Firm Seez

Pinewood Technologies Group – the company hived off from the UK’s leading automotive retailer Pendragon following the dealer group’s sale to Lithia Motors – on Wednesday that it has invested $4.2 million in Dubai-based automotive start-up AI company Seez.

The investment gives it a minority holding in the firm whose product portfolio is built on proprietary tech, including an AI chatbot, according to a report in the UK-based Car Dealer Magazine.

Seez also offers various e-commerce and omni-channel products to dealer groups around the world, boasting a presence in 16 markets.

Pendragon, which operated the Stratstone and Evans Halshaw dealership chains, completed its $521 million sale to the US dealer group Lithia & Driveway in February this year.

The move saw Pendragon’s dealer management software arm Pinewood taking its place on the London Stock Exchange, with Pendragon renamed Pinewood Technologies Group and Bill Berman staying on as CEO.

Under the terms of the Seez deal, Pinewood will also enter into a strategic commercial partnership with Seez to bolster Pinewood’s product offering as it prepares to expand into the US market alongside Lithia.

The partnership offers Pinewood exclusive distribution rights of Seez products in the US market and with existing customers.

Unique Opportunity

Pinewood Technologies CEO Bill Berman said that this was a unique opportunity for us to further enhance our industry-leading SaaS offering in the automotive retail market.

“Seez is an outstanding business that offers sophisticated, AI-powered products to the automotive sector and this investment offers compelling commercial and operational benefits for Pinewood. We are looking forward to partnering with Seez and are excited about the future opportunities with their comprehensive AI product suite,” he added.

Seez began life in 2016 with an AI-based image recognition app for cars, evolving into a car listing aggregator app serving markets in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Pakistan and South Africa, the report said.

In 2020, it signed a partnership with Enjer Hessel, the biggest Mercedes-Benz dealer and second-largest auto dealership in Denmark, and subsequently launched an automotive retail marketplace in the Scandinavian country in 2022, the report added.

Seez also launched its automotive retail Marketplace in Denmark this March 2022 selling the first car bought and financed fully digitally in all of Scandinavia within just a few weeks of the marketplace going Live.

This marked Seez as one of the very few UAE-based start-ups to successfully break into the European market. Their success prompted the biggest automotive lender in Europe and the biggest insurance companies to join forces & partner with Seez.