Piston Raises $15M Series A to Kill the Fleet Fuel Card

Piston has raised $15 million in Series A funding to expand its cardless fuel payment network for commercial fleets across the U.S., the company announced.

FPV Ventures led the round. Existing investors Spark Capital and Pear VC also participated. The financing brings Piston's total funding to $22.5 million.

The company's growth numbers explain the investor interest. Piston said its payment volume increased eightfold over the past year, while its merchant network grew 40 times. The platform now operates at more than 2,000 fuel stations across 48 states. Piston also said its point-of-sale integrations are certified and live on systems representing more than 95% of U.S. merchant fuel sites.

Piston's core product replaces physical fuel cards with a system that authorizes transactions for individual drivers and vehicles at the point of sale. The company says the approach gives fleets more immediate visibility into fuel spending while cutting the fraud and administrative work that come with physical cards. In 2025, drivers used a smartphone and a dynamic QR code to authorize fuel purchases, with transactions tied to details including the vehicle, time, location and fuel type.

The CEO frames the problem as a legacy technology issue, not a detection problem. "Commercial fuel still runs on payment technology built for another era," said Vikram Sekhon, Piston's co-founder and CEO. "Fleet fuel fraud is a physical card problem, disguised as a detection issue."

Founders built Piston from the cab

Sekhon and co-founder Shivam Shah previously operated trucking fleets. Sekhon previously told FreightWaves that he operated between 120 and 250 trucks and that fuel was his fleet's second-largest expense after payroll. He said the fleet had dealt with fraud, unpredictable fees and the administrative work involved in reconciling fuel transactions.

That experience shaped Piston's design. Instead of issuing plastic cards and chasing anomalies after the fact, the platform ties every authorization to a specific driver, vehicle and moment in time.

AI moves Piston from payments to controls

Alongside the funding, Piston is adding AI tools to give fleets more control over fuel transactions and the data they generate, according to the company.

The first product, Piston Guard, evaluates each transaction for anomalies and can flag or block suspected fraudulent spending before the transaction completes. A second product, the Piston Analytics Agent, helps fleet operators analyze spending data and identify patterns without manually sorting through the information.

The AI products build on Piston's focus on real-time transaction controls, covering both potentially fraudulent purchases as they happen and spending analysis after transactions occur.

With $22.5 million raised, certified integrations across the vast majority of U.S. fuel merchant systems, and payments volume compounding at eight times year over year, Piston now has the capital and network reach to press fleet operators on a simple question: why keep paying with plastic at all?