Bird

Founded by former Uber and Lyft executive, Travis VanderZanden, Bird began in Santa Monica, CA, as an electric scooter rental service and has since expanded to over 100 cities worldwide.

Users can download the Bird mobile application to unlock a Bird scooter scattered around cities and university campuses. They can then use the scooter to move around the city/campus freely, then leave the scooter in a safe space and use their phone to end the service and lock the scooter.

The company uses data sharing for city planning. Their platform uses customised City Dashboards, that give cities information about how their partnership with Bird is complementing their city’s mobility menu as well as City API's, which provide cities with detail and historical information on Bird operations and rider movement within their city. 

In 2018 it was discovered that the average scooter lifespan was only 28.8 days due to heavy use, despite the fact that each scooter needed to give 6 months of service for Bird to break even. Since then, the company has released two new scooters (Bird One in May, and Bird Two in August) which the company states are more durable, with Bird One averaging a lifespan of 15 months.

There have previously been reports that Bird has been in conversation with Uber about the prospect of being acquired.

Bird was valued at $2.5bn in its October 2019 Series D funding round. The company raised $275m, led by CDPQ and Sequoia. The capital will be used for vehicle R&D. 

In May 2023 Bird, Lime, Spin and Superpedestrian partnered to share best practices for creating best-practices for regulating micromobility programs in North American cities. This framework has the potential to greatly improve the experience for e-scooter and e-bike riders and non-riders alike, while allowing cities to better manage these services over the long-term.