The ‘Apple of e-bikes’ targets profitability next year even as rivals enter bankruptcy
The Cowboy Cruiser.
Cowboy
Cowboy, the Belgian electric bike maker, is expecting to hit full-year profitability in 2024 even as some of its market rivals are facing financial hardship.
Adrien Roose, Cowboy’s CEO and co-founder, told CNBC that he expects the company to reach profitability on an EBITDA basis by the end of the second quarter and then sustain this through the third quarter. EBITDA refers to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.
By the third quarter, Cowboy would then have reached profitability on a full-year basis, according to the firm’s boss.
“There is some seasonality in this business,” Roose said in an interview. “Essentially, people like buying a lot of bikes in the summer, and not nearly as much in the winter.”
However, he added, “We have a high degree of confidence that, by 2024, we’ll be EBITDA profitable and cash flow positive on a full-year basis.”
EBITDA is a traditional measure of profitability for many technology companies.
Cowboy is a startup that designs electric bikes. It’s been termed the “Apple of e-bikes” in the past due to its integration of software smarts in its bikes.
Cowboy links its bikes with an app that allows users to lock them when they’re not in use, track their location, predict battery depletion and get weather updates.
Cowboy also serves as the designer of the bikes rather than the manufacturer — it gets other firms to handle the making of its bikes, similar to how Apple relies on contract manufacturers like Foxconn to make its iPhones.
Tough times for the e-bike industry
But e-bikes have had a rough time in the market lately.
A shift in supply chain dynamics has led to a situation where e-bike stock levels are now in abundance at many manufacturers but demand has fallen significantly from the pandemic boom.
That’s different to when e-bike firms were scrambling for more units in 2021 when consumers were itching for alternative, sustainable modes of transport and a way to get outside during the Covid lockdowns.
In that period, customers were often faced with huge delays to their orders as companies couldn’t keep up.
“By the time that this traffic jam started normalizing, the world was already shifting to get in quite a different place,” Roose said. “Towards 2022 and 2023, there was an overall slowdown in demand.”
“This created the perfect storm for companies which have massively over-ordered and now are facing demand that is slightly lower than hoped so or expected, and that translated immediately to very high inventory levels, a lack of cash, and a lack of liquidity.”
The e-bike industry has been plagued by recent bankruptcies of major players in the space. In July, Dutch e-bike firm VanMoof filed for protection from creditors. Administrators overseeing the bankruptcy process are exploring a number of options for VanMoof, including a potential asset sale to a third party so it can continue operations.
Revonte, a Finnish e-bike firm, also filed for bankruptcy and said it is selling its intellectual property.
Roose said that his firm is unlike competitors in that it doesn’t manufacture bikes itself and therefore has a slimmer cost line.
With some competing e-bike firms, “their cost base was way too high for their size,” Roose said, adding that VanMoof operated with far more employees than Cowboy despite boasting similar rates of revenue.
Long-term outlook
Cowboy launched its new Cruiser e-bike with an upright seating position — known as the “Dutch” riding position — earlier this year.
The bike is intended to provide riders with “improved posture and increased visibility on the road,” according to the firm.
But at an “introductory” price of $3,490, Cowboy’s e-bikes don’t come cheap. And on Aug. 1, the company raised prices of its belt-driven “Performance” configuration bikes to $3,790 from $3,490.
E-bike firms have had to get more aggressive on pricing as the tide of venture capital that buoyed the industry in 2020 and 2021 has seeped out of the market with interest rates climbing higher.
Still, though, Roose said he’s keeping his eye squarely focused on the long-term potential of e-bikes — driving sustainability with less cars on the street — rather than the short-term market outlook.
“The demand for e-bikes in general is really strong and it’s been growing year-on-year,” Roose said. “In 2023, there’s been a bit of a slowdown, but the mid to long-term demand for micro mobility in general is as strong as it’s ever been and we’re super bullish.”
Revenues have risen by 38% year-over-year for Cowboy’s best-selling models, while its operating costs have fallen 19% year-to-date.
Roose said the company has also increased its margin to 40% — no mean feat for a hardware company — and has reduced its losses by 83% this year.
The company secured 13 million euros ($14.1 million) in additional funding from its existing institutional backers and crowdfunding investors in April.
The e-bike market is expected to reach $119.7 billion by 2030 at a compound annual growth rate of 15.6% from 2023, fueled by rising prices of crude oil and a move toward economical and environmentally friendly modes of transport, according to Fortune Business Insights.
Chief executive officer of Google Sundar Pichai.
Marek Antoni Iwanczuk | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
Google on Friday made the latest a splash in the AI talent wars, announcing an agreement to bring in Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence coding startup Windsurf.
As part of the deal, Google will also hire other senior Windsurf research and development employees. Google is not investing in Windsurf, but the search giant will take a nonexclusive license to certain Windsurf technology, according to a person familiar with the matter. Windsurf remains free to license its technology to others.
“We’re excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf’s team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding,” a Google spokesperson wrote in an email. “We’re excited to continue bringing the benefits of Gemini to software developers everywhere.”
The deal between Google and Windsurf comes after the AI coding startup had been in talks with OpenAI for a $3 billion acquisition deal, CNBC reported in April. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The move ratchets up the talent war in AI particularly among prominent companies. Meta has made lucrative job offers to several employees at OpenAI in recent weeks. Most notably, the Facebook parent added Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang to lead its AI strategy as part of a $14.3 billion investment into his startup.
Douglas Chen, another Windsurf co-founder, will be among those joining Google in the deal, Jeff Wang, the startup’s new interim CEO and its head of business for the past two years, wrote in a post on X.
“Most of Windsurf’s world-class team will continue to build the Windsurf product with the goal of maximizing its impact in the enterprise,” Wang wrote.
Windsurf has become more popular this year as an option for so-called vibe coding, which is the process of using new age AI tools to write code. Developers and non-developers have embraced the concept, leading to more revenue for Windsurf and competitors, such as Cursor, which OpenAI also looked at buying. All the interest has led investors to assign higher valuations to the startups.
This isn’t the first time Google has hired select people out of a startup. It did the same with Character.AI last summer. Amazon and Microsoft have also absorbed AI talent in this fashion, with the Adept and Inflection deals, respectively.
Microsoft is pushing an agent mode in its Visual Studio Code editor for vibe coding. In April, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said AI is composing as much of 30% of his company’s code.
The Verge reported the Google-Windsurf deal earlier on Friday.
Technology
Nvidia’s Jensen Huang sells more than $36 million in stock, catches Warren Buffett in net worth
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, holds a motherboard as he speaks during the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, on June 11, 2025.
Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unloaded roughly $36.4 million worth of stock in the leading artificial intelligence chipmaker, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
The sale, which totals 225,000 shares, comes as part of Huang’s previously adopted plan in March to unload up to 6 million shares of Nvidia through the end of the year. He sold his first batch of stock from the agreement in June, equaling about $15 million.
Last year, the tech executive sold about $700 million worth of shares as part of a prearranged plan. Nvidia stock climbed about 1% Friday.
Huang’s net worth has skyrocketed as investors bet on Nvidia’s AI dominance and graphics processing units powering large language models.
The 62-year-old’s wealth has grown by more than a quarter, or about $29 billion, since the start of 2025 alone, based on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. His net worth last stood at $143 billion in the index, putting him neck-and-neck with Berkshire Hathaway‘s Warren Buffett at $144 billion.
Shortly after the market opened Friday, Fortune‘s analysis of net worth had Huang ahead of Buffett, with the Nvidia CEO at $143.7 billion and the Oracle of Omaha at $142.1 billion.
The company has also achieved its own notable milestones this year, as it prospers off the AI boom.
On Wednesday, the Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker became the first company to top a $4 trillion market capitalization, beating out both Microsoft and Apple. The chipmaker closed above that milestone Thursday as CNBC reported that the technology titan met with President Donald Trump.
Brooke Seawell, venture partner at New Enterprise Associates, sold about $24 million worth of Nvidia shares, according to an SEC filing. Seawell has been on the company’s board since 1997, according to the company.
Huang still holds more than 858 million shares of Nvidia, both directly and indirectly, in different partnerships and trusts.
WATCH: Nvidia hits $4 trillion in market cap milestone despite curbs on chip exports
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