Partly banks $50M led by DST Global at $500M valuation to make auto repair AI do what GPT-5 can't -- TFN

Partly’s $50 million funding round, led by DST Global at a $500 million valuation, is aimed at making auto repair AI perform the kinds of parts-identification tasks general models struggle with. The company, founded in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2020 by Levi Fawcett, Nathan Taylor, and Taylor Howes, is headquartered in Austin, Texas, with a second office in San Francisco and 160 employees across 20-plus countries. Partly’s Interpreter model reportedly reached 60% F1 on the company’s own benchmarks for 50 Toyota repair jobs, compared with 1–5% F1 for general AI without domain data. It is targeting “fitment” across vehicle variations, supported by five years of human feedback and synthetic data, plus agreements with more than fifty manufacturers. DST Global, known for bets behind Facebook, Alibaba, and Airbnb, is taking the lead despite Partly serving collision repair shops, not consumer apps.