Press Release

Digital Gold Standard in Parking Space Management: Munich-Based Scale-up Wemolo Achieves Profitability with Annual Revenue of EUR 40 Million

Achieving profitability with AI technology: barrier-free parking specialist with average annual growth of 280% manages more than 255,000 parking spaces in Europe.

Munich, May 27, 2025. The digital transformation of parking lots holds great potential - especially if it not only eliminates barriers and tickets, but also opens up new business models. In a European market for automated parking systems estimated at 50 billion euros, the Munich-based company Wemolo (www.wemolo.com) has worked its way into the top league in a very short space of time. With an annual turnover of around 40 million euros in 2024 and a positive EBIT margin in the first quarter of 2025, the scale-up has reached the profit zone despite significant growth. The annual growth rate since its foundation in 2019 has averaged 280% (CAGR), making Wemolo one of the fastest growing technology companies in Germany according to Deloitte. After several rounds of financing totaling around €30 million (€650,000 pre-seed, €4.7 million seed, €15 million Series A and most recently €10 million growth financing from partners such as CIBC Innovation Banking), Wemolo is underlining the attractiveness of digital parking solutions as a growth industry.

“We have used our scaling phase to accelerate the development of our technology in parallel and quickly gain market share in five European countries,” says Wemolo co-founder and CEO Dr. Yukio Iwamoto.

In addition to the strategic partners Armira Growth and henQ, the investors also include Flix Founders (founding team of the mobility provider Flix), with Jochen Engert supporting the company as an advisor. “The fact that Wemolo has worked its way into the black after a comparatively short time is the result of our capital-efficient growth course - with significantly less investment capital than comparable tech companies. Our AI-based system not only provides property owners, asset managers, retailers and local authorities with digital parking solutions, but also valuable data for strategic business decisions.”

From a Campus Project to a Digital Platform

Originally created in July 2019 from a project by UnternehmerTUM, Wemolo now operates AI-based camera systems for license plate recognition and billing at over 3,000 locations in five countries. Every day, Wemolo digitally records and processes more than two million parking transactions. The company currently employs around 250 people and manages a total of 255,000 parking spaces - from supermarkets and central parking garages to hospitals and leisure facilities such as ski resorts and swimming lakes.

“Our profitability is not based on a cost diet, but on sustainable scaling: more volume with stable fixed costs, better space utilization and increasingly valuable data assets for our customers,” explains CEO and co-founder Jakob Bodenmüller. “Thanks to our AI-based platform, we can react very quickly to market requirements and continuously develop our solution.”

Business Model with Measurable Added Value for Operators

The core principle: AI-based computer vision is used to record entrances and exits, making barriers, tickets, parking discs and, above all, cost-intensive on-site staff superfluous. Wemolo offers various modules for parking digitization - from the monitoring of free spaces to fully digital payment systems that can be adapted to the respective customer requirements. The intelligent platform not only enables efficient parking management and smooth user experiences, but also provides valuable data for optimized business decisions.

“We provide anonymized but highly meaningful data on space usage,” explains CPTO and co-founder Bastian Pieper. “One example: by effectively avoiding third-party parking, one of our grocery customers was able to significantly increase the availability of its customer parking spaces. The result: a measurable increase in store sales, which, with typical food retail margins, enables a mid-five-figure increase in profits per year.”

“In commercial real estate projects, our precise usage data enables optimized parking space dimensioning, which leads to significant savings for investors in underground parking investments and improves the overall return on the property,” adds Pieper.

Growth Financing Used Strategically

The management sees the break-even as confirmation of the business model, but also as a signal of the growing demand on the market. “We are noticing that more and more companies and property owners are actively looking for an uncomplicated, reliable solution to digitize their parking spaces - and to collect relevant data at the same time. The topic is still in its infancy. We want to make Wemolo the strongest provider in the field of smart parking solutions,” says Iwamoto.

“We are pursuing a hybrid approach in our technology development,” explains Pieper. “We develop the key components - our custom-trained AI and the central software platform - completely in-house, while we have special components such as payment machines manufactured in Germany according to our design.”

“We rely on robust industrial-grade hardware running our custom-trained AI to reliably detect each vehicle in all weather conditions. This combination of in-house software expertise and targeted hardware integration allows us much faster innovation cycles than traditional parking system operators or pure software providers,” continues Pieper. “Similar to tech pioneers from Silicon Valley, we bring new features and AI optimizations to market in weeks instead of quarters.”

Expansion and the Challenges of Growth

Wemolo is already active in five European countries, including Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Poland and Italy. The company plans to expand its digital payment solutions in these and other European markets in 2025. The scale-up relies on a network of strategic partnerships with food retailers, real estate developers and municipal institutions.

“Traditional barrier parking systems are still standard in many regions, but the market is changing rapidly,” says Bodenmüller. “Our digital concept increases consumer convenience, the cost-effectiveness of properties and meets ESG requirements.”

The management believes that the biggest challenges to further growth are the different regulations on camera surveillance in European countries and the acceptance of unrestricted systems by traditionally oriented operators. “With our GDPR-compliant technology and measurable cost benefits thanks to the elimination of high-maintenance barriers and ticket systems, we are winning over the market,” emphasizes Pieper.

Ambitious Goals in a Growing Market

Against the backdrop of profitability, Wemolo is now planning its next growth step. “We are already the market leader in the digital parking segment in Europe and want to become the strongest provider,” says Iwamoto. “The fact that we are already profitable gives us the independence we need to invest in technology, teams and expansion without being dependent on external capital.” Industry experts are forecasting continued strong growth for the European market for digital parking systems. So far, less than 25 percent of the total market, which is estimated at around EUR 50 billion, is considered to be technologically modernized - for example through camera-based access systems, automated payment processes or intelligent space analysis.

About Wemolo

The Munich-based tech company Wemolo specializes in digital parking space management and optimization. The idea was born in July 2019 from a project at UnternehmerTUM. The team around the three founders Jakob Bodenmüller, Bastian Pieper and Yukio Iwamoto now employs over 250 people in Munich and at four other European locations: Salzburg, Zurich, Wroclaw and Milan. In the DACH region as well as in Poland and Italy, over 3,000 parking areas already rely on the Wemolo solution, which records more than 2 million parking transactions every day. In the Deloitte Fast 50 ranking, Wemolo is listed as the fastest growing startup in Germany. Its customer portfolio includes well-known retailers such as Aldi, Edeka and Carrefour, leading real estate companies such as Defama Deutsche Fachmarkt AG and HIH Real Estate, restaurants such as McDonald's and Burger King, hotel chains such as Best Western, renowned healthcare facilities such as the Asklepios Klinik and numerous financial service providers and local authorities throughout Europe. Further information at www.wemolo.com

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Company Contact

Wemolo GmbH

Contact person: Moritz Meister

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D-81541 München

Tel: +49 162 6961751

Email: presse@wemolo.com

Website: www.wemolo.com