The API data connectivity provider for the freight industry gets $35 million to expand across modes and target shippers more directly.
The freight transportation technology provider project44 said Tuesday it has garnered $35 million in new funding from a collection of venture capital firms to underpin the build-out of the company’s multimodal data connectivity platform.
The new round is led by OpenView, with additional investment from new investor 8VC, which has backed the online shopping marketplace Wish and the virtual reality hardware maker Oculus. Also taking part are existing investors Emergence Capital, which has backed Salesforce, Box and Zoom; eBay founder Pierre Omidyar’s firm Omidyar Technology Ventures, backer of digital freight broker Convoy; and Chicago Ventures.
Jim Baum, venture partner at OpenView, will join the company’s board.
“p44 is building a category-defining company,” he said in a statement. “We invested because their unique approach provides customers the ability to unearth, manage, analyze and act upon all of their data, regardless of where it originated or resides.”
The company has become synonymous with the adoption of application programming interfaces (APIs) in the freight industry, as its early push was to connect carriers, shippers and brokers through APIs rather than entrenched EDI or more rudimentary system connectivity methods.
More recently, project44 has augmented its message to include the enabling of real-time visibility and better usage of data that supply chains generate.
project44’s customer base includes shippers like Technicolor, ABB and Steelcase and freight brokers like Echo Global Logistics, Worldwide Express and GlobalTranz.
The Chicago-based company said it will use the new funding to invest in growth and that it expects to add 200 employees to its existing roster of 80. The company currently provides North American coverage for rail, parcel, full truckload, less-than-truckload and volume LTL shipments. At a project44 summit in the fall, executives outlined their future roadmap to include expansion into international modes.
“Our goal from day one has been to create opportunities for individuals, companies and communities by reimagining how to execute in a way that hasn’t been done before,” project44 CEO and founder Jett McCandless said in a statement. “We’ve sought out the best investors to accelerate our ability to help global enterprises turn dynamic data into transportation opportunities.”
At its core, project44 has sought to better connect freight management systems with real-time data to foster better decision-making around pricing, transit times and visibility. The company has sold its vision amid a hyper-competitive retail environment, where retailers are having to keep pace with Amazon and other e-commerce marketplaces and put downstream pressure on suppliers and those suppliers’ transportation and logistics providers.
While project44 often gets lumped together with real-time visibility platforms like MacroPoint (acquired in 2017 by Descartes), 10-4 Systems (bought in 2017 by Trimble) and FourKites, and sometimes is compared to digital freight brokers like Convoy and Transfix, the reality is that it partners with many of these companies. It’s also become a key data connectivity provider for transportation management systems like JDA Software, McLeod Software and MercuryGate.
The company has grander ambitions to become more sticky with shippers, having focused intently in recent months on the managers of supply chains, not merely connecting carriers and brokers more efficiently through APIs.
“When it comes to expanding into international markets and ocean shipping, we are committed to seamlessly connecting all relevant data points together regardless of where the information originated or resides,” project44 President Tommy Barnes told American Shipper. “That goes beyond tracking the latitude and longitude of an individual ship and plotting it on a map. We’ve set out to solve the lack of underlying connectivity in order to deliver the most predictive and reliable supply chain ecosystem possible.”
project44 snares new funding round
