Nox Mobility raises €2 million to reinvent Europe's night trains

Private cabins, first routes in 2027 

Nox Mobility has closed a €2 million pre-seed round. The raise is led by IBB Ventures, with participation from Italian investor Tommaso Lucca and industry figures including Dr Patrick Andrae, co-founder and CEO of HomeToGo. The capital will accelerate team growth, fund construction of a prototype and support preparations for its first routes in 2027.

Despite a recent resurgence of interest in night trains and record bookings on some popular routes, the market has shrunk sharply over the past two decades. Between 2001 and 2019, the total number of night train services in Europe fell from around 1,200 per week to roughly 450.

'A product people actually want to sleep in'

In response, Nox Mobility is taking a markedly different approach to traditional overnight rail. Rather than shared compartments, the start-up is developing trains that give every passenger their own private space. The promise is to replace short‑haul flights and hotel stays with a single overnight journey at a comparable price. Trains depart from central stations in the evening and arrive the next morning in the destination city centre, avoiding airport transfers and security queues.

To deliver on that, Nox Mobility aims to combine airline‑grade reliability with a hospitality‑led experience. For leisure travellers, the journey becomes a nights rest in its own right. Business travellers, who already account for 30% of night train users in France, avoid early starts for first flights, overnight stays and lost working time.

"Berlin has created mobility companies that reshaped European travel. Nox has the team to do it again: financial backing, operational credibility and a community that's already waiting. The infrastructure exists. What's missing is a product people actually want to sleep in," said Roman Pimonov, Senior Investment Manager at IBB Ventures.

Nox Mobility, founded in 2025, brings together three entrepreneurs and operators with experience in rail, mobility platforms and technology start-ups. Thibault Constant built one of Europes largest rail media communities with Simply Railway, which has more than 600,000 subscribers. Janek Smalla brings operational expertise from FlixTrain and Bolt, having helped scale new mobility models in some of Europes most regulated transport markets. Artur Hasselbach previously co-founded payment fintech orderbird.

"More than six hundred thousand people follow Simply Railway because they believe in the potential of night trains. They tell me every week what's broken: the shared compartments, the delays, the prices. Nox Mobility is the result of years of riding night trains, discussing with customers and seeing what works and what doesn't," said Thibault Constant, Co-Founder of Nox Mobility.

"Night trains are one of Europe's last big untapped mobility opportunities. The infrastructure already exists and the market is waiting. Raising this round shows that investors believe in our approach to create a loveable product with a business model that works," said Artur Hasselbach, Co-Founder of Nox Mobility.