Bird Acquires German Scooter Startup Circ, Adds $75M To Series D 

Scooter startup Bird acquired German scooter company Circ, and extended its last round of funding by $75 million, the company announced Monday.

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Circ, which is based in Berlin, has operations in 43 cities across 12 countries, according to a statement from Bird. About 300 people will join Bird’s European workforce.

Circ raised about $60.6 million in its Series A funding round in January 2019, according to Crunchbase. Target Global led the round.

“We like their laser focus on treating cities as their No. 1 customer and their mindset of prioritizing profitability over growth,” Bird CEO Travis VanderZanden said in a statement.

This marks the second acquisition for Bird, which was founded in 2017. The company acquired San Francisco scooter startup Scoot in June for an undisclosed amount.

Bird raised $275 million in its Series D funding round in October 2019. With this financing, the round has been bumped up to $350 million, Bird said, bringing its total funding to $623 million, according to Crunchbase. Bird kept the series open because there was enough demand to invest in the company, the company said in a statement.

A handful of scooter startups popped up a couple years ago and quickly grew in popularity. But the companies have also faced increasing regulatory challenges, durability issues with scooters and criticism over questionable business models. Bird competitor Lime recently announced it would be ending operations in 12 markets to focus on profitability.

“Investors today are looking for financially disciplined companies with a clear path to profitability,” VanderZanden said in a statement. “More than 12 months ago we shifted our focus from growth to profitability which put us in a position to deliver the strongest unit economics and longest-lasting custom-designed vehicles of any micro-mobility company today.”

Illustration Credit: Li-Anne Dias