Shipping
YC grad RetailReady raises $3.3M for an AI warehouse app that hopes to save brands billions
RetailReady targets the $40 billion compliance market to help reduce the number of retail compliance losses that shippers incur annually due to incorrectly shipped packages.
Autonomous shipping startup Orca AI tops up with $23M led by OCV Partners and MizMaa Ventures
If you thought autonomous driving was just for cars, think again. The “autonomous navigation” market — where ships steer themselves guided by AI, resulting in fuel and time savings —…
As Iran-backed groups attack Red Sea ships, investors are backing startups assisting global cargo
Multiple shocks to global supply chains brought about first by the pandemic and more recently by Iran-backed Houthis targeting cargo ships in the Red Sea have shown there’s a need…
Overhaul, which taps AI to secure physical supply chains, raises $73M in equity and debt
Businesses dependent on the physical supply chain face a number of potential roadblocks. Customers expect fast deliveries with visibility into each step, but costs —…
Maritime giant DNV says 1,000 ships affected by ransomware attack
DNV, a Norwegian shipping classification society, has confirmed its systems were hit by a ransomware attack, affecting around 1,000 ships that rely on its technology. The Oslo-based DNV said in…
Locad lands Series A to expand its “logistics engine” across Southeast Asia and Australia
When Constantin Robertz was working at Zalora, he was involved in moving warehouses six times as the e-commerce company outgrew its logistics infrastructure. This inspired him to co-found Locad, a…
Maergo raises $20M to provide Amazon-style fast and cheap air and ‘middle mile’ services to online retailers
With the holiday shopping season well underway and showing signs that it might not be as sluggish as some predicted, a startup out of Austin, Texas, is announcing funding to…
Harbor Lab secures €6.1M to make shipping dock more easily and cheaply
When a ship goes into a commercial port, there are lots of port call-related costs. These are called things like “disbursements” and “port call expenses.” They can include port dues,…
Former ButcherBox execs leverage meat shipment expertise into new D2C startup
Grip is trying to solve the challenge of shipping perishable items, reducing the damage rate and improving margins, all while navigating constantly-changing conditions.
Berlin’s Kaiko Systems nets €2M to help maritime technical operations go paperless
From healthcare to manufacturing, traditional industries have been getting a digital makeover over the past decade. But some sectors have been left behind. Maritime shipping, argued Fabian Fussek, CEO and…
1MRobotics emerges from stealth with $25M for ‘nano-fulfillment’ centers
As evidenced by recent layoffs and scaled-back expansions, on-demand delivery is a challenging space. Brands, retailers and operators push to deliver with maximum efficiency, a strategy that’s led within the…
Denim, a fintech platform for freight brokers, raises $126M in equity and debt
Denim, the fintech platform for freight and logistics formerly known as Axle Payments, today announced that it raised $126 million in a Series B funding round led by Pelion Venture…
Nyshex lands a fresh $25M to match shippers with ocean carriers
The New York Shipping Exchange (Nyshex), a platform that connects shippers with ocean carriers, today announced that it raised $25 million in a Series B funding round led by Collate…
Shipmates makes order fulfillment less tedious for the Philippines’ online sellers
The Philippines’ e-commerce market now has a gross merchandise volume of $12 billion, a 132% increase from 2020, and is expected to reach $26 billion in GMV by 2025. This…
Smart mug maker Ember just spun out a life sciences company
Ember’s first decade has been a journey. The Southern Californian startup first hit our (and most folks’) radar as a mug company. The company captured a fair bit of press…
Fleetzero begins its search for the first giant ship to convert to battery power
Fleetzero has an ambitious goal: to compete with global shipping companies with its own boats, powered entirely by electricity. The company just secured $15.5 million in new funding and is…
Onfleet nabs $23M to further develop its last-mile delivery software
The importance of last-mile delivery (the movement of goods from a shipping hub to their final destination) came into sharp focus during the pandemic. Statista projects that e-commerce will drive…
Seadronix aims to reduce marine accidents at port and sea with AI
South Korean startup Seadronix wants to reduce the issue of marine accidents, 75% of which are caused by human error, according to a 2019 Allianz safety and shipping report. The…
Shopify today announced that it will acquire Deliverr, a San Francisco, California-based e-commerce fulfillment startup, for $2.1 billion in cash and stock. The deal, rumors of which were reported in…
FedEx app’s test appears to show the ability to track deliveries from other services
FedEx has been working on a new feature for its consumer mobile app that would seemingly allow it to better compete with the popular Shop app by Shopify. One of…
Featured Article
Fleetzero looks to capsize the shipping world with electric vessels serving forgotten ports
We’ve been shipping things across the oceans for centuries, and the world’s supply chains increasingly rely on diesel-powered megaships big enough to block entire channels by themselves. How do you decarbonize this monolithic industry? Fleetzero thinks it can with electric vessels making short hops all the way around the Pacific,…
Maritime intelligence platform Greywing raises seed funding from investors like Flexport
Founded in 2019, Singapore-based Greywing was created to help ship operators and other members of the maritime industry make critical decisions. It includes tools for crew change management, predictive reporting…
Portcast gets $3.2M to create more transparent and sustainable supply chains
For many manufacturers and freight forwarders, managing logistics is still a very manual process: tracking shipments with a call or online lookup, and entering that data into an Excel spreadsheet.…
Nigerian digital freight provider MVX lands $1.3M to help shippers move cargoes faster
In Africa, chartering vessels and processing ocean freight can be challenging. The sector is largely inefficient and fragmented. Merchants also struggle to access finance to perform cross-border trade in the…
Greywing launches Crew Change to help shipping companies navigate COVID-19 regulations
For fleet managers, managing shipping crew changes across different countries is an elaborate process even in the best of times — and now is definitely not the best of times.…
ShipBob nabs $200M at a $1B+ valuation to help e-commerce companies run logistics like Amazon’s
E-commerce saw a massive surge of activity and growth in 2020; and while we may hear a lot about how big companies like Amazon got even bigger during the COVID-19…
ISEE brings autonomy to shipping hubs with self-driving yard trucks
Robotaxis may still be a few years out, but there are other industries that can be transformed by autonomous vehicles as they are today. MIT spin-off ISEE has identified one…
Zencargo raises $42M to expand its digital-first freight-forwarding platform internationally
While consumers and businesses continue to use their purchasing power to spin the wheels of the globalized economy, one of the companies that’s built a technology platform to help that…
ABB and AWS team up to create an EV fleet management platform
Swiss automation and technology company ABB has announced a collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to create a cloud-based EV fleet management platform that it hopes will hasten the electrification…
Tive nabs $12M Series A to track shipment conditions in real time
Tive, a Boston-based startup, is building a hardware and software platform to help track the conditions of a shipment like say food or medicine to make sure it is stored…
