Partner Article

FourKites Secures $100M Funding to Infuse UK Supply Chains with Real-Time Visibility

FourKites®, the #1 real-time supply chain visibility platform, today announced a new $100 million Series D financing round. The growth financing is led by Thomas H. Lee Partners, L.P. (“THL”), with participation from Qualcomm Ventures, LLC, Volvo Group Venture Capital AB and Zebra Technologies, as well as existing investors August Capital, CEAS Investments, Hyde Park Angels, Hyde Park Venture Partners and Bain Capital Ventures, bringing total capital raised to over $200 million. The funding will enable FourKites to expand its breadth of supply chain visibility solutions, as well as expand its geographic reach and customer support in Europe and beyond. The financing also ushers in a new era in supply chain management, where automated, interconnected and collaborative global supply chains — spanning transportation, warehouses, stores, trucks and more — are powered and optimized by real-time visibility data and machine learning.

“This latest funding round, following a year of record growth for FourKites, validates our vision of breaking down the barriers across today’s supply chains — between transportation, warehouses, stores and siloed technology systems,” said Mathew Elenjickal, founder and CEO of FourKites. “We look forward to expanding our services throughout Europe, starting in The Netherlands, Germany and the UK, and partnering with our investors to enable true end-to-end visibility to unlock tremendous value for the entire supply chain ecosystem. Our platform enables shippers and suppliers to enter the next digital supply chain era.”

“As the market leader, FourKites is operating at significant scale, and has the world’s biggest brands as loyal and growing customers,” said THL Managing Director Mike Kaczmarek, who will join the FourKites Board of Directors. “FourKites will continue to benefit from secular mega-trends, such as automation penetration and increased supply chain complexity. We are thrilled to lead this funding round as part of our vision to invest in companies that will steer the future of supply chain automation.”

FourKites pioneered real-time supply chain visibility in 2014 and has since built the world’s largest platform that helps leading brands track their shipments across every mode of transportation (road, rail, ocean, air) and uses machine learning to predict exact times of arrival. This helps organizations lower operating costs, improve on-time performance and create better customer relationships. The FourKites network boasts:

• 500+ of the world’s biggest brands, including 9 of the top-10 CPG companies and 18 of the top-20 F&B companies, and industry giants such as Henkel, The Dow Chemical Company, Kimberly-Clark, Eastman Chemical, Meijer, PetSmart, The Michaels Companies, Land O’Lakes, Coca-Cola, AB InBev, Constellation Brands and 3M • 1 million+ shipments tracked daily, with over 120% YoY growth over 2020 • 6.4 million connected facilities, with 70% YoY growth in 2020 • 140% increase in tracking ocean and rail shipments in 2020
• 450,000 connected carriers in 176 countries across road, rail, ocean, air, and courier

In 2020 alone, FourKites delivered more than 120 new products and features, including a number of industry-firsts such as multimodal end-to-end purchase order tracking; Appointment ManagerSM, an automated appointment scheduling platform for facilities, shippers and carriers; and a new software category — Dynamic Yard® — that extends visibility into warehouses and yards. And in a recent assessment of more than 250 companies by leading research and consulting firm Everest Group, FourKites was the only supply chain visibility provider among 30 “AI Trailblazers” transforming business processes with artificial intelligence, recognized for its advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies that predict shipment ETAs and anticipate supply chain congestion based on billions of data points.

Together with its new investors, FourKites is now ready to fuel a broader vision for the future of digital supply chains — one that connects the physical and digital worlds of warehouses, stores and transportation with real-time data and machine learning. Recent supply chain disruptions precipitated by the pandemic have accelerated the move to real-time transportation visibility platforms (RTTVPs), prompting Gartner to predict that 50% of leading global enterprises will have invested in real-time transportation visibility solutions by 2023.[1]

“The increasing adoption of IoT solutions is ushering in a new breed of valuable logistics management tools that deliver real-time end-to-end visibility,” said Carlos Kokron, Vice President of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., and Managing Director at Qualcomm Ventures.

“FourKites has become a leader in real-time supply chain visibility by improving inventory management and reducing shipping costs to deliver better customer service. We’re excited to invest in FourKites to innovate chip-to-cloud solutions for the supply chain industry.”

“Real-time visibility will be a cornerstone for supply chains in the future,” said Dan Tram, Investment Director of Volvo Group Venture Capital. “We’re excited to invest in FourKites as part of our vision to bring new solutions to market, improve sustainable transportation, and build the next-generation ecosystem of connected trucks and shippers.”

“There is tremendous customer and vision alignment between FourKites and Zebra,” said Tony Palcheck, managing director of Zebra Ventures, Zebra Technologies. “Our collective customers want real-time visibility into their goods and assets throughout the journey — from the manufacturing facility to the end location. Investing in a proven solution provider such as FourKites extends Zebra Technologies’ capability to help our customers achieve asset visibility, and unlock new levels of performance and customer service. Tracking items in the warehouse or distribution center, as well as over the air, sea or road, and analyzing the options to determine best next actions, will empower our customers to better serve their customers.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by FourKites .