Supply Chain Tech Monthly Roundup — November 2021
Welcome to the November 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.
In this month’s roundup:
- Drone Deliveries
- Fundraising, Mergers & Acquisitions, and Stocks
- Company News
- State of the Industry
- Companies Hiring
On a scale of 1–10, how likely would you be to run away screaming from this delivery robot?
Drone Deliveries
Zipline successfully completed the world’s first long-range drone delivery of COVID-19 vaccines in Ghana. This was in partnership with Pfizer and BioNTech who have provided financial support and technical assistance to Zipline especially since the vaccine requires ultra-cold-chain storage. This milestone will allow for approximately 50,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to be distributed in Ghana. Zipline has delivered over 220,000 Covid-19 vaccines throughout Ghana making it the first company to deliver vaccines through autonomous aircraft at scale.
Flytrex raised $40 million in their Series C round to expand their drone delivery services to more suburbs. Some of their early partners include Walmart and Chili’s. The company will be using the money to further develop its hardware and software. Flytrex is focused on suburban deliveries to customers’ backyards. They build their own aircrafts and the software that powers them. They are currently awaiting FAA approval to expand where they can operate and how far they can go.
Walmart has also partnered with DroneUp LLC to begin offering aerial deliveries to customers’ homes. Customers can now receive items ranging from cans of tuna to thermometers. The flights are currently limited to 1.15 miles radius from a base outside of a Walmart store in Farmington, Arkansas. The service will be available to locations in Rogers and Bentonville within the coming months. Eventually they want to provide their services over a longer distance. Deliveries currently cost $10 per dropoff but they are working to lower costs.
Alphabet-owned drone delivery company Wing shows off their secret drone delivery testing facility in Australia. Customers can place orders through an app and the drone delivers the package by lowering it to the ground via a tether. Wing has opted for Australia because the authorities are less strict regarding drone regulations compared to other countries. The video shows their 48-pad array of launching and landing pads. It also shows their air traffic control center and a shipping container that holds all the necessary equipment to set up a drone facility within a day. Check out Wing’s video on YouTube here.
Fundraising, Mergers & Acquisitions, and Stocks
Embark Trucks completed their SPAC merger and will trade on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol, EMBK. Alex Rodrigues has become one of the youngest CEOs of a U.S. public company at the age of 26. They are not in the business of making trucks but they do make self-driving software to turn trucking fleets autonomous. The company, founded in 2016, announced in June that it would combine with Northern Genesis Acquisition Corp II in a $5.2 billion deal.
Frete.com, a Brazilian freight management platform, is now a unicorn after raising $200 million. Softbank and Tencent led the latest funding round. The money will be used to expand services to truckers and cargo owners beyond Brazil to neighboring countries like Paraguay and Argentina. The company plans to grow its team from 1,300 to 3,500.
Orderful raises $19 million in their Series B funding round. The round was led by GLP Capital Partners and includes investments from Andreessen Horowitz and Initialized Capital. Orderful is a cloud-based electronic data exchange (EDI) platform that gives supply chain actors visibility into their supply chain. Orderful plans to use the money to grow their product suite, expand their EDI network, and grow their sales and engineering team.
Nuro, an autonomous delivery startup, raises $600 million in their Series D round. This recent round values the company at $8.6 billion. The round was led by Tiger Global and also included investments from Fidelity, Toyota’s venture arm, Kroger, and Google. The company plans to use the money to work on commercializing and scaling the production of their third-generation vehicle in south Nevada.
Delhivery, a logistics services company, has filed to go public for a $1 billion IPO. The startup is based in India and is looking to raise $998 million in funding. Delhivery plans to issue shares worth $669 million. Just four months ago the company was valued at $3 billion dollars and is now hoping to be valued at over $6 billion after the IPO.
Company News
Walmart announces it has started using driverless trucks to help deliver online grocery orders in partnership with Gatik. Since August they have been operating two autonomous box trucks, without a safety driver, on a 7-mile loop daily for 12 hours. The trucks, made by Gatik, pick up online grocery orders from a Walmart fulfillment center. The grocery orders are taken to a nearby Walmart Neighborhood Market in Bentonville, Arkansas. The partnership is part of Walmart’s transition to a “hub and spoke” model for grocery delivery where dark stores are closer to consumers and will be used to serve retail stores.
Loadsmart acquires two freight technology companies, Kamion and Opendock. Kamion is a trucking management system and Opendock is a warehouse dock scheduling software. With these acquisitions, it moves Loadsmart closer to its goal of removing barriers between carriers and shippers to move freight in a more efficient, transparent, and automated way.
Berkshire Grey reported their Third Quarter 2021 results (Nasdaq: BRGY). The company develops robotic solutions to automate supply chain processes. They reported revenue of $18.8 million which is up 750% from Q3 2020. Earnings per share was a net loss of $0.22. The company secured $36 million in new orders, $25 million from an anchor company, and $11 million from new companies.
Microsoft announces Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing preview. It includes capabilities like Asset Productivity, Production Operations, Planning & Optimization, and Supply Chain Visibility. The Supply Chain Visibility capability allows manufacturers to create a digital supply chain twin. A digital supply chain twin is a digital representation of a physical supply chain to predict disruptions and proactively overcome them. According to Microsoft, when there is a disruption manufacturers can analyze upstream and downstream impacts and perform simulations and model scenarios at scale to determine the best resolution and then automate that response. An example given in this Supply Chain Dive article is heavy rainfall in a region can cause a decrease in the demand for allergy medicine. Manufacturers can adjust their inventory accordingly in near real-time.
State of the Industry
The Biden-Harris Supply Chain Disruption Task Force has been working to alleviate the supply chain bottlenecks. Here is an update from the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg.
China has announced that it is imposing a mandatory quarantine of up to seven weeks for returning cargo crew members who have been overseas.
American Eagle buys Quiet Logistics, a 3PL, for $350 million. Read why here.
See the list of startups that attended Dynamic Ventures’ Founders Camp in November.
Interested in seeing the life of a truck driver? Check out Clarissa Rankin’s TikTok.
Uber Eats has partnered with Tokyo Smoke, a Toronto-based cannabis retailer, to allow customers to order through the app and pick up their weed orders at one of Tokyo Smoke’s 50 dispensary locations.
CPOStrategy has released its 2021 ProcureTech 100 Digital Yearbook. If you want insights into the procurement ecosystem and digital procurement systems check it out here.
Companies Hiring
- Technical Product Manager — San Francisco or Remote
- Strategy & Business Operations Associate — San Francisco or Remote
- Behavior Planning Engineer — San Francisco or Remote
- Senior Supply Chain Analyst — Remote
- Software Engineer — San Francisco or Remote
- Data Analyst — Ghana
- Flight Test Specialist — Hollister (California)
- Training Developer, eLearning — Remote
- Software Engineer, University Grad, 2022 — Palo Alto, Remote (England), Sydney (Australia)
