AxleAuto
Our Story

Fixing Car Buying by Empowering Dealers

From the founders of CarWoo (acquired by TrueCar) comes AxleAuto—the AI co-pilot that gives dealers the tools they need to deliver exceptional lead experiences from message one.

Our Mission

"To fix car buying by giving dealers the AI-powered tools they need to succeed."

AxleAuto is brought to you by the founders of CarWoo, which was acquired by TrueCar. We then spent 6 years building dealer and car buyer solutions at TrueCar. While at both companies, our mission was to improve car buying and the lead process.

We realized that if the car buying experience is going to be solved, it has to start with dealers. The lead experience is bad—not because dealers don't want to serve customers well, but because the system isn't set up for success. The more leads that come in, the harder it is for sales teams to handle them effectively. There are too many balls in the air, and things get missed.

This is where AI can truly make a difference. We still want to fix car buying, but we're going to do it by giving dealers the tools they need to sell. We're starting with lead handling because it's the first touchpoint for customers to engage with dealers. We're confident that if you use AxleAuto, your car buyers will experience the best lead handling starting from message one.

The Founders

TM

Tommy McClung

CEO

Co-founder of CarWoo! (acquired by TrueCar)

Former CTO & CPO at TrueCar

EL

Erik Landerholm

Engineering

Co-founder of CarWoo! (acquired by TrueCar)

Former Chief Architect & SVP Engineering at TrueCar

DG

David Giffin

Engineering

Former CPO at CarWoo!

Former SVP of Technology at TrueCar

JS

Jay Stotz

Engineering

Co-founder of Springboard Retail

CTO at Springboard Retail (2010-2020)

The road so far

2009

CarWoo! Founded

Founded CarWoo!, backed by Y Combinator, with a mission to fix how customers engage with dealers online.

2014

Acquired by TrueCar

CarWoo! was acquired by TrueCar. The founding team joined TrueCar to continue building dealer and car buyer solutions for the next 5 years.

2019

Release Founded

Founded Release, backed by Sequoia Capital, CRV, and Y Combinator. Took a break from automotive to build developer tools and cloud infrastructure.

2025

AxleAuto.ai Launched

Returned to automotive with AxleAuto.ai—applying AI to finally solve the lead handling problem and improve the car buying experience by empowering dealers.

"We believe AI should enhance human relationships, not replace them."