US-based freight management platform developer Flexport raised $100m from Logistics services provider SF Express, thus upping its total funding to $304m. The new funding will be used to double warehousing capacity and open offices in Taiwan and the cities of Hamburg, Chicago and Shanghai. The valuation at which SF Express invested was not revealed. However, the company was valued at $910m in its last $110m series C round in October 2017. Wells Fargo Strategic Capital, a subsidiary of financial services firm Wells Fargo, participated in that round.
Previously, Flexport had received $65m in a series B round in 2016, which featured Bloomberg Beta, media group Bloomberg’s corporate venturing unit. In 2015, the company had raised a $20m series A round, which featured Bloomberg Beta as well as GV, one of the venturing subsidiaries of diversified internet company Alphabet.
Founded in 2013, Flexport provides an online service that allows users to access trucking, air and ocean freight shipments. Flexport also offers additional services as cargo insurance, inventory financing and customs brokerage. The company was responsible for shipping of about $3.8bn of goods last year.
The round and the company are part of the broader logistics and shipment space, opportunities in which have not been left out by corporate venturers, as the GCV Analytics historical bar chart suggests. Over the past four years, there was a considerable number of deals in this space involving corporates, although the deal count fluctuated somewhat. The total estimated capital in those rounds amounted to billions of dollars in this period – from $1.79bn in 2014 to $7.38bn in 2016 and then down to $6.17bn last year.
