FreightWaves, the leading provider of supply chain market information, announced a $16 million capital raise to fund product expansion and go-to-market activities for FreightWaves Carbon Intelligence (FCI), the company’s new sustainability platform built on FreightWaves SONAR.
The investment is led by Triangle Peak Partners, a Palo Alto-based venture capital firm that partners with companies in the technology and energy transition sectors. 8VC, Hearst Ventures, Prologis Ventures, Rise of the Rest fund, Fontinalis and Kayne Partners also participated in the round. Erik Levy, Group Head of Corporate Development for DMGT, the parent company of the Daily Mail Group, personally invested.
FreightWaves chose Triangle Peak Partners because of the firm’s unique understanding of subscription data platforms and energy transition technologies.
“We’ve received very strong interest in our Carbon Intelligence platform and customers are actively involved in developing the road map for the offering,” said Craig Fuller, Founder and CEO of FreightWaves. “There is a major need in the market for carbon emission transparency and solutions that can help companies actively mitigate their carbon footprint. With FCI, supply chain managers are able to benchmark, analyze, monitor and forecast their Scope 3 emissions.”
This investment follows a growth round in the summer of 2020 with Kayne Partners, which was raised to help the company scale operations.
“We still have all of the capital we raised from Kayne last summer on our balance sheet,” continued Fuller. “We finished 2020 much better financially than forecasted, dramatically improving our burn rate and we’re already seeing greater acceleration to-date in 2021. This additional capital will help us speed investment in the FreightWaves Carbon Intelligence platform, while maintaining a very strong balance sheet for opportunistic investments such as acquisitions and product development.”
The Triangle Peak round represents the largest valuation markup in company history and allows FreightWaves to make significant investments in its sustainability platform.
Company updates
In the first quarter of 2021, annual recurring revenue (ARR) from the company’s software business grew over 80% compared to the same quarter last year. The company’s media business increased revenue by over 130% compared to the same period last year. Much of the momentum in the SaaS business is attributed to the introduction of SONAR Supply Chain Intelligence (SCI), which provides shipper-centric supply chain benchmarking, analytics, monitoring and forecasting capabilities.
“Over the last 18 months, we have transitioned from an early stage venture-backed startup to a growth-oriented, but operationally efficient business,” Fuller added. “We have focused on driving operational excellence in all aspects of our business and have balanced high-growth with a path to profitability. As we adjusted our model from blitz-scaling to operational excellence, our growth and product innovation slowed a bit. But that period is behind us and we are now seeing an acceleration in new product development, new customer acquisition and retention.”
FreightWaves also saw significant audience growth in its media business. Since the start of 2021, FreightWaves.com has had over 4.5 million unique visitors. Average time on the site was over 3 minutes, significantly higher than any other freight and supply chain media property.
FreightWavesTV, which was launched in April 2020, has had more than 9 million views and has served more than 107 million minutes of content to-date. In the first quarter alone, FreightWavesTV had more than 3.1 million views and streamed more than 34 million minutes of content. FreightWavesTV is the only daily streaming video site dedicated to logistics and supply chain news and content.
FreightWaves plans to return to in-person physical events in November, with a new immersive format. F3: Future of Freight Festival will take place November 8-10 in FreightWaves hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee. F3 will dive into the current and future of freight logistics. The event is expected to attract thousands of C-level executives involved in logistics, transportation and supply chain management. Based on early registrations and interest, F3 will be the largest physical event FreightWaves has hosted to-date.
About FreightWaves
FreightWaves is the world’s leading provider of freight market forecasting, data, news and analysis. Logistics and supply chain firms depend on FreightWaves for benchmarking, analytics, monitoring and forecasting of pricing, capacity, demand, energy and carbon intelligence. The company provides the freshest data and market insights through SONAR, a subscription SaaS platform, and through the world’s largest streaming media network focused on logistics and supply chain information.
FreightWaves SONAR provides near real-time freight market data and supply chain intelligence to 500+ enterprises. FreightWaves Carbon Intelligence provides supply chain firms with transparency on carbon emissions and solutions to achieve carbon neutrality.
FreightWaves Media operates the FreightWaves, American Shipper and Modern Shipper brands. FreightWaves Media serves more than 1.5 million unique monthly visitors on its websites, 15 million monthly minutes of streaming TV, and 100,000 monthly podcast downloads.