NEW YORK -- More KeyMe kiosks will be coming to 7-Eleven convenience stores.
KeyMe Inc., the cloud-based locksmith that saves and duplicates keys, has announced a $20 million Series B round of financing, led by Comcast Ventures, with additional participation from Battery Ventures, White Star Capital, 7-Eleven’s 7-Ventures, Ravin Gandhi, Coinstar founder Jens Molbak and The Michael Polsky Family Office, among others.
7-Ventures LLC is convenience-store retailer 7‑Eleven’s corporate-venture arm, focused on discovering, partnering and investing in consumer facing technologies that complement 7‑Eleven’s core business of providing customers with convenient products and services.
The investment will enable KeyMe to launch its next generation of kiosks in new markets nationwide, expand its proprietary technology to support more sophisticated automotive transponder keys, scale kiosk production and expand its executive team.
KeyMe also announced a major expansion in its national retail footprint, including Sears, Kmart, Bed Bath & Beyond, Rite Aid, Lowe’s, Albertsons, 7-Eleven and other retail brands. The company is on track to ship more than 1,000 kiosks to meet retailer demands this year, it said.
KeyMe is one of the largest key duplicators in the country with hundreds of thousands of users. Both the KeyMe app and the kiosk support most home, office, mailbox, automotive and high-security keys. The company recently expanded its supported key types to include car and motorcycle keys with rolling transponders. These type of keys typically cost hundreds of dollars at dealerships.
In addition to printing keys at any KeyMe kiosk, users can use KeyMe’s mobile app to scan their keys via their phone, securely store digital snapshots in the cloud and print at any kiosk or have keys securely shipped same day. Rather than manually tracing and cutting keys as traditional locksmiths do, KeyMe uses proprietary computer vision technology coupled with machine learning algorithms to identify the keys and advanced robotics to recreate each key from scratch, making each copy more accurate than the original.
“The locksmith industry is an enormous offline service which is characterized by poor quality of service, price gouging and consumer mistrust,” said Greg Marsh, founder and CEO of KeyMe. “We’re delivering unparalleled convenience and value through advanced robotics to fundamentally transform the way millions of people make and manage their keys.”
Founded in 2012, KeyMe is a secure and convenient way to copy, share and personalize keys and solve lockouts. The company has smart kiosks in major retailers that can copy keys in fewer than 30 seconds, as well as mobile applications that enable customers to safely scan, save and share a digital copy of their key and order copies shipped to their door.
Dallas-based 7-Eleven operates, franchises and licenses more than 10,700 7-Eleven convenience stores in North America. Globally, there are 57,900 7-Eleven c-stores in 17 countries.
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