FreightTech firms snap up funding amid sluggish investment market

May 10, 2023

While venture capital investment in startups has slowed over the last several quarters, funding continues to flow to companies focused on boosting the global supply chain.

Supply chain-focused startups Unity SCM, Ox, Prewave and Pando recently secured a combined $70.6 million in venture capital.

Overall, venture funding for supply chain startups in the fourth quarter of 2022 fell to $4 billion — down 71% year over year, according to PitchBook.

“The dealmaking decline is leveling off from 2022 — a sign that the market could soon regain its footing — and seed valuations are ticking up,” PitchBook said in a recent report.

Unity SCM secures $8M Series A funding to expand supply chain solutions

Unity SCM, a supply chain operations platform, has brought in $8 million in a capital raise led by Vertex Ventures Israel.

The Series A round also included participation from UpWest, Vertex Ventures US, Dan Scheinman and Ariel Maislos.

The company, which has offices in San Jose, California, and Tel Aviv, Israel, offers an enterprise-scale logistics management solution aimed at helping companies avoid supply chain disruptions.

“Most supply chain modernization projects get bottlenecked waiting for scarce IT resources to connect the disparate data silos that lie beneath,” Amir Taichman, CEO and co-founder of Unity SCM, said in a news release. “Every time supply chain teams try to cobble together a single view in emails and spreadsheets for a new project or fire drill, they create another virtual silo.”

Unity SMC’s platform works with point solutions and systems, such as SAP and Oracle, to map data with a single view that users can see and access immediately.

Since its founding in 2020, Unity SCM has secured a total of $13.2 million in funding. The company plans to use the latest funding to expand its platform to more global supply chain customers.

Arkansas startup Ox receives $12.6M in Series A funding

Order fulfillment platform Ox has raised $12.6 million in Series A funding.

The round was co-led by BBG Ventures and MaC Venture Capital and includes capital from Cortado Ventures, Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, Florida Funders, KCRise, Tech Square Labs, Vuzix, Atento Capital and Agya Ventures.

With the latest round, Ox has raised over $16 million since its launch in 2019. In 2021, Ox raised $3.5 million in a seed round the company used to expand its workforce.

The Bentonville, Arkansas-based firm leverages augmented reality to speed up order picking in warehouses.

Officials for Ox said the latest funding will be used to power customer expansion, scale additional use cases and create more human-centered automation categories throughout frontline operations.

“We provide advanced tools and capabilities to engage and excite frontline workers, and we prioritize their needs by creating a system that values their work,” Charu Thomas, founder and CEO of Ox, said in a news release. “By doing so, we improve operator satisfaction and employee retention rates. At a time when investing in workers is needed, human centered automation is the way forward.”

Supply chain risk management firm Prewave raises $19M

Prewave has secured $19.7 million in funding in a Series A round from Creandum, Klarna and SEON.

The logistics risk management and compliance provider will use its latest funds to upgrade its platform to proactively address and resolve risks within supply chains.

The Vienna, Austria-based company currently has more than 100 employees. Prewave has hundreds of global clients, including BMW, PwC and Lufthansa, according to a news release.

“Prewave has pioneered a comprehensive solution for supply chain risk monitoring and compliance that establishes the company as first mover and a key player in the supply chain risk discipline,” Harald Nitschinger, Prewave’s co-founder, said in statement. “Now the time has come to become the first true end-to-end operating system for supply chain risk.”

The company has raised a total of $32 million since its founding in 2017.

Pando raises $30M to improve logistics operations across supply chains

Freight management platform provider Pando announced a Series B funding of $30 million, which will be used to drive the company’s global growth, particularly the U.S. market.

The round was led by Iron Pillar and Uncorrelated Ventures, with participation from existing investors Nexus Venture Partners, Chiratae Ventures and Next47.

Pando is a startup developing freight management technologies, providing an open-market freight management platform that digitizes logistics operations.

Pando’s customers include Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, Nestle, Nivea, Accuride, Danaher, Perfetti Van Melle and BP Castrol.

“Most of the brands we love and live with are weighed down by legacy logistics tools that make their products less affordable and accessible, and less eco-friendly,” Nitin Jayakrishnan, Pando’s CEO, said in a news release. “Pando’s platform allows these brands to automate manual processes, modernize legacy systems and plug the gaps between tools without multi-year transformations, delivering change here and now.”

Pando was founded in 2018 and has offices in San Jose, California, and Chennai, India. The company has raised a total of $41 million over the last five years.