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“The nuclear weapons were stored over there” is not something anyone had ever said to me when I’ve visited a startup’s HQ… until a few weeks ago.

SODA is different from most startups we’ve featured at PreSeed Now. For a start, their HQ is at a former RAF base in rural Oxfordshire, which was home to US nuclear bombers during the Cold War.

And second, while still at an early stage, they’ve achieved a lot in a short time, and raised a little more than most startups we feature. It’s a fascinating story.

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But first:

• Manchester’s Turing Innovation Catalyst will soon kick-off “a brand-new, six-month programme designed to support high-potential AI scaleups in Greater Manchester to reach the next level”. If you’re based in the area and that sounds like a fit for you, you have until Sunday to apply for TIC Engine Room.

• London-based startup with a memorable name, BoobyBiome has raised £2.5 million for its “breast milk storage device designed to mimic the conditions within the breast and a live microbiome drop that can be added to formula milk, ensuring every baby has equal access to a healthy future.”

– Martin

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SODA adds fizz to the software-defined vehicle market

Traditionally, the engine was the heart of a vehicle.

These days, that’s not necessarily true. Software is an increasingly critical part of everything from the fastest racing cars to budget family cars.

“We see software as the soul and the spirit of the vehicle,” says Sergey Malygin, CEO at SODA, a company that wants to be at the centre of new vehicle development.

The startup operates in a space known as ‘Software Defined Vehicles’ which are more like computers than the mechanical steeds of old.

Software permeates through modern vehicle design. A typical EV, for example, will have underlying software that does basic things like control the battery and the drivetrain to make the car move. Other layers on top of that manage things like driving experience, heating, or internet connectivity, all the way up to the software that drivers interact with on a screen as they drive.

SODA has developed software for this whole stack, allowing it to serve up-and-coming vehicle startups and retrofitters with everything they need, or more mature automakers with just the parts that fill gaps in their existing technology. The tech is modular and can be licensed as required by each individual customer.

For smaller companies, it’s about taking the hassle of the software side of things away in a simple and comprehensive way. For larger customers, it can be about helping them move faster in an increasingly competitive market where new players from places like China are entering the market with compelling new offerings.

“If we look at the state of the industry today, we see how major automakers are struggling because they have already invested tens of years, and billions, into existing tool chains and processes, and it's very difficult for them, sometimes, to adjust to this new reality. And this is what we can help to fix as well,” Malygin says.

The big pitch to vehicle manufacturers here is decreasing development cost and the time it takes to bring a new model to market. SODA has developed a framework and set of tools for developing new vehicles in an optimised and efficient way.

Malygin says SODA’s software is compatible with any kind of vehicle, not just EVs.

The story so far

SODA has its roots in failed Oxfordshire-based EV startup Arrival, where Malygin and other key staff previously worked.

At Arrival, Malygin had overseen development of the software underpinning the company’s vehicle platform, as well as the software for the Roborace autonomous racing car project.

But despite achieving what was hailed as the UK’s biggest ever tech IPO in 2021, Arrival began to struggle.

“Arrival hit the wall due to its inability to get all the cash needed to create the further stages of the company. It had to reduce, and finally had to collapse,” says Malygin.

“I was helping the company as much as I could, but then at a certain point in time, my vision of how it should go, and that of the company was not fully aligned. I had to go. So that was the moment when I asked myself, what do I do next?”

The answer was to continue on the same path, taking everything he’d learned at Arrival to help build the vehicles of the future. SODA was founded in 2023, bringing in talent that previously worked at Arrival.

Given SODA was born just as the generative AI boom was kicking into gear, it’s no surprise that AI finds its way into the company’s products. For example, SODA has developed climate control that learns to adjust the temperature to a driver’s taste, and generative AI to help develop automated test routines for vehicle designs.

The startup has made a lot of progress in a very short space of time, and it launched its first software suite at the end of 2024. Charge Cars was SODA’s first customer and development partner.

“We were developing literally all software for them, end to end, every part of the vehicle. That was a great, properly software-defined way to think about the vehicle... At the same time, we were creating these tools. So whatever we created, we were able to try with them and see the difference,” Malygin explains.

The result of this partnership is the Charge Cars ‘67, a high-performance EV muscle car in the style of a classic 1960s Ford Mustang. I had a chance to ride as a passenger in one recently at SODA’s HQ in rural Oxfordshire, and the car is an impressively enjoyable beast.

SODA is located at a former RAF base that was home to US nuclear bombers during the Cold War. This provides them with plenty of space to test vehicles without having to pay for time on test tracks.

Since launching its initial software suite, SODA has secured 10 customer contracts, according to Malygin. He says one common customer profile is companies that want to differentiate on things like user experience and design. They want someone else to have already handled the core underlying vehicle platform for them.

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