Supply Chain Tech Monthly Roundup — February 2022

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Supply Chain Tech Letter

7 min readMar 6, 2022

Welcome to the February monthly roundup of the supply chain tech industry where I’ll be providing quick tidbits and links about recent logistech news around companies, supply chain, trends, and innovation.

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In this month’s roundup:

Autonomous Trucking
Fundraising, M&A, and Stocks
Company News
State of the Industry
Companies Hiring

Autonomous Trucking

C.H. Robinson and Waymo announce a partnership to offer Waymo’s autonomous trucks to C.H. Robinson’s broker network. The long-term strategic partnership will combine Waymo Driver, Waymo’s AV technology, and C.H. Robinson’s Navisphere logistics platform. The collaboration will start with running multiple pilots in the Dallas-Houston transportation lane. Waymo’s fleet will haul freight for one of C.H. Robinson’s customers. This opens the door for small and mid-sized carriers to start exploring AV options that have been limited to larger carriers up until now.

Embark Trucks and Knight-Swift announce the Truck Transfer Program. This program will give Knight-Swift and their drivers’ direct access to Embark’s autonomous trucking technology. The companies say this is the first public initiative where a U.S. carrier will directly own and maintain a truck embedded with Embark’s technology. This is an important step because up until this point Embark and other autonomous trucking companies have been owning, maintaining, and dispatching their own trucks with their own drivers. The Truck Transfer Program will move those responsibilities to Knight-Swift. Through the program, the two companies will collect detailed feedback on the technology’s performance, define how the system will improve driver jobs, and develop procedures and tools to help Knight-Swift manage Embark-equipped trucks. The program will also help Knight-Swift determine how to best utilize its drivers.

U.S. Xpress joins Aurora’s Partner Ecosystem. U.S. Xpress, one of the U.S.’s largest asset-based truckload carriers, will be exploring the deployment of the Aurora Driver within U.S. Xpress operations. The collaboration will be a chance for Aurora to fine-tune their Driver-as-a-Service product offering, Aurora Horizon. Aurora will leverage Varient, U.S. Xpress’s digitally enabled fleet, to identify where their autonomous trucks can have the greatest impact. The two companies will identify optimal deployments of Aurora-powered trucks so they can address unmet demand and improve operational efficiency and productivity.

Union Pacific will be the first customer to move freight on TuSimple’s fully automated trucking route. Union Pacific subsidiary, Loup Logistics, will coordinate the freight shipments between Tuscon and Phoenix metro areas. TuSimple successfully completed their first Driver Out semi-truck run in December. They have since completed six additional Driver Out runs all without a human driver in the vehicle. The partnership with Union Pacific will be the first commercial test of TuSimple’s Driver Out program. TuSimple plans to progressively expand the scope of its Driver Out program to include daytime runs and new routes. By the end of 2023, they plan to achieve commercial viability of the program by initiating Driver Out paid freight operations.

Self-driving trucks will need to acquire land near highways to store their trucks. Autonomous trucks will drive on highways and transfer these trailers to human drivers to navigate through the cities for the last mile. Embark Trucks has entered into an agreement with Alterra to lease outdoor storage sites for what they are calling transfer hubs. The battle for land will only continue to grow as developers buy land for e-commerce warehouses and investors are buying land in anticipation of the growing need for outdoor storage facilities for these autonomous trucks.

Fundraising, M&A, and Stocks

Flexport, a provider of tech-driven freight services, raises $935 million in Series E round! The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz and billionaire Michael Dell’s MSD Partners. Shopify, DST Global, Founders Fund, and Softbank’s Vision Fund also participated in the round. The round valued Flexport at $8 billion. The company says it will use the funds for the development of its platform and expansions into new regions and markets. Ryan Petersen, founder and CEO of Flexport, was also featured in Forbes this month.

RightHand Robotics, a warehouse robotics company, raises a $66 million Series C round. The round was led by Safar Partners, Thomas H. Lee Partners, and SoftBank Vision Fund 2. Zebra Technologies, Epson, Global Brain along with previous investors GV, F-Prime Capital, Menlo Ventures, Matrix Partners, and Tony Fadell’s Future Shape also participated in the round. The company plans on using the money for product and business development.

Loadsmart, an on-demand freight marketplace, raises $200 million in Series D round. The round was led by SoftBank’s Latin America Fund. CSX Corporation, Janus Henderson Group, and BlackRock (a previous investor) also participated in the round. Following the round, Loadsmart’s valuation is now $1.3 billion making it a unicorn. The company has kept busy with its partnership with The Home Depot and acquisition of Opendock (warehouse dock scheduling software) and Kamion (trucking management system). The company plans to use the funds to further develop its tools and expand its team.

A new logistics startup called Warp has emerged from stealth mode after announcing a $2.4 million seed round. The startup was co-founded by Daniel Sokolovsky and Troy Lester. Sokolovsky founded Axlehire, a last-mile delivery startup, in 2015. Similar to Axlehire Warp connects shippers to delivery capacity except Warp focuses on the middle mile instead of the last mile. Warp’s software connects customers with cross-dock facilities and trucks. Their seed round was led by Bee Partners. Amplify.LA and others also participated.

Company News

Sam’s Club is rolling out inventory analysis equipment across nearly 600 locations. Walmart-owned Sam’s Club is killing two birds with one stone by adding Inventory Scan to their autonomous floor scrubbers. Inventory Scan was created by Brain Corp, an artificial intelligence company, who through a partnership with Tennant Company created the autonomous floor scrubbers. As the floor scrubbers move through the warehouse the Inventory Scan tower will scan the shelves and capture inventory data. Inventory reports will then be sent to club managers including details such as pricing accuracy, planogram compliance, stock levels, and product localization.

Natilus announces they have $6 billion in advance purchase commitments of their pilotless cargo planes. They have more than 440 orders with some of their customers including Flexport, Kenyan cargo airline Astral Aviation, Volatus Aerospace, and Dymond Group, a consulting firm with an aerospace division. Flexport in particular has entered into letters of intent for two of their cargo jets with an option to buy another. Flexport’s venture capital arm is also making an investment into Natilus. Natilus is developing a series of autonomous cargo jets that will support short-haul, medium-haul, and long-haul journeys. They expect to fly commercially in two years with their short-haul jet.

Nikola, an electric semi-truck company, released their Q4 earnings report where things appear to be looking up after getting off to a (very) rocky start. The company announced that it will begin series production in March with a plan to deliver between 300 to 500 electric trucks to their customers in Q2 2022. Other achievements they have announced include pilot testing with customers such as Anheuser-Busch, a battery deal with Proterra, and a deal with Corcentric Fleet Solutions to help finance their trucks. Nikola still hasn’t produced revenue but with production ramping up and deliveries on the horizon revenue should start flowing in soon.

Virgin Hyperloop is in discussion with airports and port facilities in an effort to create a pilot program for a cargo shipment service. Virgin Hyperloop’s plan is to use battery-powered pods that travel through sealed tubes at a speed up to 670 miles per hour. They say the pilot will most likely begin with connecting airports to warehouses or connecting a cargo airport to another cargo airport. Their goal is to begin the programs by the end of 2024. Unfortunately, as they’ve changed their company’s focus Hyperloop has laid off half their staff.

State of the Industry

Harvard Business Review published a research article analyzing the sentiment of warehouse workers and supervisors towards automation.

The U.S. Department of Justice will be cracking down on companies that are exploiting supply chain disruptions for profit.

Check out this video by Wendover Productions where he talks about drone delivery and what went wrong.

Ben Gordan talks about what to expect this year in supply chain.

Warehouse space is becoming more and more limited as companies buy up warehouses leading other companies having to find alternatives such as multistory warehouses to get the space they need.

Awesome thread on how supply chain tech 2022 = fintech in 2010 by Zach Fredericks.

Some Stats:

Via.Delivery says that 18% of U.S. online shoppers choose buy-now, pick up anywhere at checkout
Logistic warehouse vacancy rates reached an all-time low of 3.4% at the end of 2021
In 2021, venture-backed supply chain management companies saw $11.3 billion in funding according to Crunchbase
Merger and acquisitions of venture-backed logistic startups have reached $2.7 billion in the U.S. according to this WSJ article.

Russia, unfortunately, decided to invade Ukraine in February. This has thrown the world into disarray including the supply chain. Here are a few articles highlighting the impact:

Some audio recordings/podcast episodes to check out: #117: Ben Braverman of Flexport — Dynamo Ventures | Supply Chain & Mobility Venture Capital, The Real Cost of 15 Minute Grocery Delivery — The Journal. — WSJ Podcasts, Jason & Scot Show Episode 287 — Amazon Supply Chain Deep Dive with Marc Wulfraat — retailgeek.com

Companies Hiring

Flexport

Client Solutions Manager — Remote, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Phoenix, New York City
Enterprise Account Executive — Remote
Director, Supply Chain Operations — Atlanta, Chicago

Warp

Key Account Manager — United States
Director of Financial Planning & Analysis — United States
Operations Supervisor — Los Angeles

Natilus

Aerodynamics Engineer — San Diego
Flight Test Engineer — San Diego
Software Engineer — San Diego

FreightWaves is building the Barstool Sports of freight and they are hiring.

Dynamo Ventures is hiring their next round of Venture Fellows who will start in July 2022.