Press release
TGC Capital Partners Announces Strategic Investment in Smilee to Transform Automotive Retail with Agentic AI
The partnership is structured as a two-year operational engagement that combines investment with hands-on execution support across product engineering, international expansion, go-to-market acceleration, governance, and dealer network access. This collaboration is focused on driving scalable growth, strengthening global market presence, and accelerating long-term business transformation.
Smilee has developed an agentic AI sales platform purpose-built for automotive retail enabling dealerships to engage, qualify, and convert buyers automatically, around the clock. As automotive retail increasingly shifts toward AI-driven commerce, Smilee's platform positions dealers to move beyond traditional lead generation into fully conversational sales workflows integrated directly into dealership backend systems.
The Nordic automotive market presents a strong early-growth environment for the platform, driven by high digital adoption, competitive dealership ecosystems, and increasing demand for measurable conversion efficiency.
"Smilee has built exactly the kind of category-defining product we are looking for in our investments - a genuinely agentic platform solving a real commercial problem for car dealers, said Gaute Green-Stensrud, Partner at TGC Capital Partners. Over the next two years, our role is to help transform that product advantage into market leadership across the Nordics and beyond". As part of the engagement, TGC Capital Partners will work closely with Smilee across several strategic growth areas:
• Accelerating development of Smilee's agentic AI sales capabilities
• Expanding international go-to-market operations
• Scaling marketing, sales enablement, and pipeline infrastructure
• Strengthening operational governance and growth frameworks
• Providing access to the AutoFacets automotive dealer ecosystem
TGC Capital Partners believes the timing is significant. AI-native sales infrastructure for automotive retail remains an early and underpenetrated market globally, creating an opportunity for category leaders to emerge.
"We are proud to welcome this strategic partnership and the deep operational support from TGC Capital Partners. Automotive retail is shifting to conversational commerce, and true commercial value requires integrating AI deeply into dealership backends. By pairing Smilee's AI Sales Platform with technical expertise and network by Gateway Group of Companies, Smilee fast-tracks its customers to the forefront of AI-driven commerce." Says, Teuvo Karppinen, CEO, Smilee.ai.
About TGC Capital Partners
TGC Capital Partners, a strategic investment arm of the Gateway Group of Companies, is an operator-led hyperscaling platform and the strategic investment arm of Gateway Group. The firm partners with founders to accelerate growth, embed operational expertise, and build resilient, high-performance companies across sectors and geographies. Learn more at: https://www.tgccapitalpartners.com/
About Smilee.ai
Finland-based Smilee.ai develops an AI Sales platform that transforms automotive retail websites into autonomous, 24/7 transactional commerce engines. The platform deploys intelligent AI Sales Agents capable of executing complex workflows directly integrated into the various back-end systems. Built on secure, EU-native architecture, Smilee fast-tracks automotive dealerships to the forefront of AI-driven commerce. Learn more at: https://smilee.ai/
Media Contact:
Suparna Dasgupta
Gateway Group of Companies
Maria Montessorilaan 3,
2719 DB Zoetermeer, The Netherlands
Phone: +31 (0) 79 3200 980
Email: suparna.dasgupta@thegatewaycorp.com
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