Opportunity for local shared mobility solutions as Bird and Micromobility.com struggle to turn a profit
May 30, 2023
min. read
Shared mobility companies Bird and Micromobility.com (formerly Helbiz) stormed onto the scene by introducing innovative and convenient transportation solutions, capturing the attention of urban dwellers worldwide.
However, as the micromobility industry enters a more mature phase, companies like Bird and Micromobility.com continue to grapple with obstacles when it comes to attaining financial stability. This has prompted them to reassess their excessively ambitious expansion strategies.
What factors contribute to these challenges, and what implications does this hold for the industry as a whole? Could local micromobility ventures provide a superior solution to meet the increasing demand for these services? Let's delve further into the financial predicament of Bird and Micromobility.com to gain a better understanding.
Bird: downsizing and struggles in the stock market
Established in 2017, Bird is a micromobility company that provides electric transportation solutions in the USA and Europe. Their range of shared vehicles includes e-scooters and e-bikes. The company also sells vehicles to distributors, retailers, and direct customers. With its headquarters located in Miami, Florida, Bird currently employs 425 individuals and operates in 105 cities.
Recently, Bird's first-quarter 2023 financials revealed challenges in maintaining ridership and revenue. Despite implementing cost-cutting measures, the company's performance failed to convince investors of its ability to achieve profitability – the company's stock plummeted nearly 19% after announcing its first-quarter earnings.
In 2022, Bird faced a challenging year. The company announced plans to completely exit Germany, Sweden, and Norway, as well as wind down operations in numerous other markets, primarily small to mid-sized, across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. They also reduced their staff by 23%.
Despite a positive revenue increase of 12.06% in 2022, the company faced substantial losses totaling $358.74 million, marking a significant 66.9% increase compared to 2021. The challenges continued in 2023 as Bird witnessed a decline in rides and deployed vehicles. With a net loss of $44.3 million recorded at the end of Q1 2023, it’s likely that the company will continue to downsize its operations.
Micromobility.com: similar woes despite the acquisition of Wheels and rebranding
Founded in 2015 and headquartered in New York, Micromobility.com delivers micromobility services in Italy, the United States, and Singapore (43 cities in total), which include e-scooters, e-bicycles, and e-mopeds. It also operates Helbiz Kitchen, a delivery-only ghost kitchen restaurant, and the Helbiz Live streaming platform. The company currently employs 284 people.
In 2023, the company, formerly known as Helbiz, underwent a rebranding and transformed into Micromobility.com Inc. This rebranding coincided with the plans to launch retail stores across the United States.
In 2022, Micromobility.com successfully completed its acquisition of Wheels, a shared micromobility operator, along with promises to its investors that the merger would lead to a doubling of annual revenue and facilitate the path to profitability. The company set its sights on capitalizing on Wheels' extensive user base of 5 million riders and venturing into untapped markets.
Despite these hopes, Micromobility.com experienced less than stellar financial results in 2022. The company achieved a revenue of $15.54 million, indicating a 21.07% growth compared to the previous year's $12.83 million. However, the company also incurred losses amounting to -$82.07 million, reflecting a 13.3% increase compared to 2021.
In 2023, Micromobility.com announced a reverse stock split to meet Nasdaq Capital Market's minimum bid price requirement and make their common stock more attractive to investors. This move didn't come as a surprise, considering that the company received a delisting warning from Nasdaq in 2022. Coupled with its enduring track record of operating losses and negative cash flows over time, the overall outlook of the company's financial performance is rather discouraging.
Why are Bird and Micromobility.com facing financial difficulties and exiting markets?
The difficulties faced by Bird and Micromobility.com can be partly explained by their venture capital-backed business model. They witnessed swift expansion while hemorrhaging substantial amounts of money. And the more they expanded, the more money they bled. Now, it’s unsurprising to witness their heavily subsidized business models shifting their priorities from aggressive growth to mitigating losses and striving for profitability.
In recent years, there has been a surge in the popularity of shared mobility special purpose acquisition companies (SPAC). These companies are created solely for the purpose of raising capital through an initial public offering and have no commercial operations of their own. The ultimate goal of a SPAC is to acquire or merge with an existing company.
Financial struggles have become a common theme among shared mobility SPACs This can be attributed to the rush of companies going public without first establishing a sustainable business model – and Bird and Micromobility.com are no exception to this trend. The challenges faced by these companies emphasize the significance of building a strong and viable foundation prior to entering the public market.
The relentless pursuit of expansion has proven to be an ineffective strategy. For instance, some experts suggest that Bird's decision to outsource its operations to franchises made it harder to persuade cities and secure contracts. Their emphasis on breadth rather than depth resulted in a lack of understanding regarding local communities and the nuances of local legislation. As a result, major players like Bird and Micromobility.com have been withdrawing their fleets from “less profitable” cities.
The soaring shared micromobility market: a golden opportunity for local entrepreneurs
According to a McKinsey study, the shared micromobility market has the potential to reach a staggering $50 billion to $90 billion by 2030, with an estimated annual growth rate of approximately 40% between 2019 and 2030. By 2030, shared micromobility could constitute around 10% of the overall shared mobility market.
In this context, the recent financial challenges faced by Bird and Micromobility.com should not be seen as indicative of a bleak future for the entire industry. Instead, these setbacks highlight the inherent unsustainability of aggressive and expansive business models within the shared micromobility landscape.
Local operators with smaller ground teams enjoy a notable edge over companies like Bird and Micromobility.com. By focusing on underserved markets and having an intimate understanding of their communities, these operators can deliver superior service while maintaining lower costs and stable profit margins.
Returning to Bird's Q1 2023 financial report, they also reported 0.9 rides per deployed vehicle per day. Now, let's compare this figure to other operators. We conducted a survey involving two EU-based operators that make use of Atom Mobility:
- Operator 1: With a fleet of 4,000+ vehicles across over 10 cities, they recorded an average ride per vehicle of 0.9 in Q1 2023
- Operator 2: Operating in a single city with a fleet of 200 vehicles, they achieved an average ride per vehicle of 2.7 in Q1 2023
As fleet sizes increase, the average ride per vehicle tends to decrease, as seen with Operator 1 and Bird. However, the figure from Operator 2 highlights the potential for local operators to thrive in underserved cities that larger shared mobility companies may neglect.
We have seen examples of this – Go Green City, a Swiss electric moped-sharing company, presently provides its services in Zurich and Basel. Their small, tightly-knit team prioritizes local knowledge, enabling them to operate with enhanced flexibility and agility – a level of service that larger companies like Bird or Micromobility.com will find challenging to match. Overall, more than 100 projects have successfully launched their shared mobility ventures with Atom Mobility's assistance, operating in over 140 cities across the globe.
As the desire for shared micromobility services grows – with a focus on community safety and the ethical integration of these modes of transportation into the overall urban transit system – it seems that local operators have a distinct edge over large multinationals.
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Introducing ATOM Mobility OpenAPI: Empowering mobility operators with seamless integrations
✅ ATOM Mobility has launched OpenAPI v1 - giving vehicle-sharing, rental, and ride-hailing operators full control to integrate their services into MaaS platforms, websites, and partner apps. Discover how this powerful tool can help you expand reach, automate operations, and drive more bookings.
July 9, 2025
min. read
We’re thrilled to announce the launch of the ATOM Mobility OpenAPI v1 - a major step toward enabling mobility operators to seamlessly integrate their services with third-party platforms, partner systems, and custom applications.
With the OpenAPI, ATOM Mobility opens up new possibilities for businesses running vehicle-sharing, rental, and ride-hailing services to extend their digital reach, enhance customer experience, and unlock new revenue streams.
What is an OpenAPI and why does it matter?
An OpenAPI (or application programming interface) is a set of standardized protocols that allows external software systems to interact with your platform. In simple terms, it acts like a bridge between your mobility service and the outside world — enabling secure data sharing and functional integration.
For mobility businesses, OpenAPIs have become a key tool for:
- Displaying fleet availability in Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) platforms
- Enabling ride or rental bookings directly from external platforms (websites, apps, kiosks)
- Automating back-office workflows and data pipelines
- Enhancing customer service tools with real-time ride information
What makes ATOM Mobility’s OpenAPI different?
While many mobility providers offer GBFS (General Bikeshare Feed Specification) to share read-only data (ATOM Mobility will continue supporting GBFS) - such as vehicle locations and availability - these feeds are typically limited to visibility. Users still need to switch to a provider's app to complete the ride.
ATOM Mobility’s OpenAPI is different. It offers full read-write access to the core functions of your platform - similar to what operators can already do in the back-office dashboard. This means that third-party apps can not only display your vehicles but also handle booking, payments, and ride management entirely within their own interface.
This is a game-changer for expanding your service footprint beyond your app.
What’s included in OpenAPI v1?
The first version of the OpenAPI supports all core modules — Vehicle sharing, Digital rental, and Ride-Hailing — with both public and private endpoints for:
- User registration and authentication
- Vehicle discovery and availability
- Zone rules, pricing, and ride logic
- Starting and ending rides or bookings
- Accessing ride history and user activity
- Enhanced actions: skip wallet checks, trigger some commands, bypass OTP, and more
Typical use cases
Here are some examples of how mobility operators are already planning to use the ATOM OpenAPI:
1. Deep MaaS platform integrations
Connect your fleet to fast-growing MaaS platforms, for example:
- umob - a Dutch mobility booking app that recently raised €3.5M to expand its "all-in-one" MaaS experience across Europe. With OpenAPI, your vehicles could be fully bookable and payable directly from their interface.
- Moovit – a mobility super-app used by over 1.7 billion riders in 3,500+ cities. Traditionally, Moovit displays vehicles using GBFS and redirects users to provider apps - with OpenAPI, the entire booking could happen inside Moovit.
- Jelbi (Berlin) - Germany’s flagship MaaS platform, integrating 12+ operators, including car-sharing, scooters, and public transport. A direct API integration offers visibility and usage on one of Europe’s most advanced multimodal networks.
2. Bookings via your website
Allow users to book rentals or ride directly from your website without needing to download an app upfront. This is especially useful for tourists, first-time users or hotels. The app would only be needed to unlock the vehicle or track the driver (in case of ride-hailing).
3. B2B partner integrations
Want to offer mobility through hotels, offices, or real estate platforms? Now they can show your vehicles and complete bookings within their apps - driving high-value B2B usage without manual overhead.
4. Customer support automation
Support agents can pull up a rider’s active trip data in external helpdesk tools using ride ID endpoints - improving efficiency and resolution speed.
5. Custom dashboards and analytics
Build your own reporting layer by pulling real-time and historical ride, user, and revenue data into tools like Power BI, Tableau, or custom CRMs.
How to enable the OpenAPI?
The OpenAPI is available to all ATOM clients on the Premium Plan, which includes:
- Access to full OpenAPI documentation and developer tools
- 100,000 API requests per month included in your support fee
- Technical assistance from the ATOM team for setup and testing
Ready to expand your mobility ecosystem?
Whether you’re exploring new channels, seeking B2B integrations, or joining a MaaS platform, the ATOM OpenAPI gives you the tools to scale faster and smarter. Want to learn more or schedule a call with our integrations team?
Contact us: https://www.atommobility.com/ask
Blog
Micro-mobility market consolidation heats up: ATOM Mobility acquires ScootAPI
In a significant move signaling further consolidation within the micro-mobility software sector, industry leader ATOM Mobility announced its strategic acquisition of ScootAPI. The deal, finalized on June 1, 2025, strengthens ATOM Mobility's dominant position in the B2B SaaS Micro-Mobility market.
June 16, 2025
min. read
In a significant move signaling further consolidation within the micro-mobility software sector, industry leader ATOM Mobility announced its strategic acquisition of ScootAPI.
The deal, finalized on June 1, 2025, strengthens ATOM Mobility's dominant position in the B2B SaaS Micro-Mobility market. This deal also marks a successful and timely exit for ScootAPI founder, George Kachanouski, who is already channeling his entrepreneurial energy into a new AI Venture in stealth mode for now.
For years, both ATOM Mobility and ScootAPI have been key players, providing essential software solutions for micro-mobility operators worldwide. This acquisition sees ATOM Mobility, led by CEO Arturs Burnins, proactively solidifying its market leadership. The move was driven by a strategic imperative to win the top spot in a competitive landscape by integrating ScootAPI’s valuable assets and client base.
About ATOM Mobility:
Founded in 2018 by Arturs Nikiforovs and CEO Arturs Burnins, ATOM Mobility empowers entrepreneurs to launch and scale mobility platforms worldwide, including vehicle sharing (scooters, bikes, mopeds, cars), digital rental, and ride-hailing businesses. With a suite of products including customizable rider apps, comprehensive dashboards, operator apps, and robust analytics, ATOM Mobility supports over 200 projects and 35,000 vehicles, facilitating over 1,000,000 rides monthly. The company is committed to providing reliable, agile, and well-designed technology with a strong focus on customer revenue growth and system stability, aiming to be the leader in B2B SaaS for micro-mobility.
About ScootAPI:
Founded in 2019 by CEO George Kachanouski, ScootAPI established itself as a significant player in the micro-mobility software space. The company delivered a robust white-label SaaS platform that empowered entrepreneurs and operators worldwide, successfully launching more than 50 distinct micro-mobility projects across diverse international markets. ScootAPI was dedicated to fostering 'smart' city transportation, thereby contributing to reduced CO2 emissions and an improved quality of urban life for communities worldwide.
"This is an acceleration moment for ATOM Mobility and the micro-mobility SaaS market as a whole," said Arturs Burnins, CEO of ATOM Mobility. "Acquiring ScootAPI aligns with our strategy to lead the industry and provide the most comprehensive, reliable, and innovative solutions to operators globally. We're excited to welcome ScootAPI’s clients into the ATOM Mobility platform, further accelerating the growth and efficiency of shared mobility worldwide."
For George, this move wasn't initially on his roadmap. He was invested in ScootAPI's growth. However, the recent explosion in AI technology sparked a new, compelling passion. “Selling ScootAPI wasn't something I was planning to do," George admitted. "We had built a good product, and the journey was far from over in my mind. But then the AI revolution really took off, and I found myself completely captivated by the potential of agentic workflows to automate business processes. The idea of building a new company in the AI space, something potentially even bigger and on a brand new frontier, became incredibly exciting."
As the transition moves ahead, George remains confident that ScootAPI's clients are in good hands. “ATOM Mobility has a clear vision and the technical depth to support operators long-term,” he said. “That was important to me. I didn’t want to hand things over to just anyone – I wanted to be sure the people relying on our platform would still be supported and able to grow.”
The integration of ScootAPI into ATOM Mobility promises a smooth transition for clients, who will now benefit from an expanded suite of features and robust support under the ATOM Mobility umbrella, further streamlining operations for micro-mobility entrepreneurs globally.
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