We’re excited to share that Piston, a cardless payments platform for commercial fleets and gas stations, has raised a $7.5M seed round to revolutionize the fuel marketplace. The round was led by Spark Capital, with participation from Pear VC and BOND. This follows Pear’s previous pre-seed investment through PearX W25. The team will use this capital to scale go-to-market operations and expand its rapidly growing network of gas stations and fleet partners across the U.S.
How We Met Piston
We first met Vikram Sekhon and Shivam Shah, Piston’s founders, when they joined PearX W25 as former fleet owners who had felt the pain of managing fuel at scale firsthand.
In their previous businesses, fuel was their second-largest expense after payroll—and by far the most chaotic. Fleet cards were riddled with hidden fees, rampant fraud, and reconciliation nightmares. They tried every payment solution out there. None worked.
So they built Piston from scratch.
What They’re Building
Piston is not just another fleet card. In fact, it’s not a card at all.
Instead, Piston is a direct payments network that connects fleets and gas stations through a secure, app-based platform. Drivers pay with a dynamic QR code generated by the Piston app, tying every transaction to a specific vehicle, fuel type, time, and location—eliminating fraud and removing the overhead of managing physical cards.
On the other side, gas stations—especially the 90% that are independently or franchise-owned—plug directly into Piston to gain access to new commercial demand without expensive hardware, integrations, or middlemen. It’s a win-win.
Piston is now powering over $20M in annualized fuel volume, serving 120+ fleets across 800+ stations, and growing at 50% month-over-month.
Why We’re Excited
What makes Vikram and Shivam unique is not just that they deeply understand their customers—it’s that they were the customers. Their product decisions reflect real-world experience and operator empathy.
When they joined PearX, they consistently outpaced every growth target. We watched them go from prototype to meaningful revenue in record time. They’ve built a product that is saving fleet operators tens of thousands of dollars and helping gas stations capture new, recurring demand.
We believe Piston is not just solving a payments pain point—it’s creating a new category for the fuel economy. And there’s a massive opportunity to modernize this long-overlooked sector of mobility infrastructure.
What’s Next
With this new capital, Piston is hiring across go-to-market, product, and engineering, with offices in Cupertino, CA, Lehi, UT, and Kolkata, India. The company is doubling down on expanding its footprint among fleet operators and independent station partners nationwide.
We’re proud to have been early partners in Piston’s journey, and we’re thrilled to continue supporting Vikram, Shivam, and the team as they scale a modern fuel payments network from the ground up.