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Project44 lands $35 million in private funding, adds parcel
services to API portfolio
Logistics technology provider project44 said last month it
had landed $35 million in funding from six companies,
by far its largest-ever financing round. It also introduced
a software module to support the North American parcel
supply chain, adding today’s perhaps most dynamic trans-
port mode to its portfolio.
The funding round nearly triples to $48 million the
capital that project44 has received since it went to market
in 2015. OpenView led the financing syndicate, with addi-
tional funding from 8VC, a new investor. Existing inves-
tors such as eBay founder Pierre Omidyar’s firm Omidyar
Technology Ventures and Pritzker Group Venture Capital
contributed capital, the company said.
The funding round effectively values project44 at more
than $100 million, the company said. That valuation figure
could rise substantially by year’s end given the company’s
rapid growth and the premium valuations attached to
fast-growing IT firms. It expects to report “annual recurring
revenue” of about $17 million in 2018, a roughly 400-per-
cent increase over year-end 2017 figures. Annual recurring
revenue measures predictable and recurring revenue streams
from such services as subscriptions and maintenance.
Ally Lynch, project44’s vice president of marketing, said
proceeds will be used in part to expand the company’s inter-
national operations, notably in ocean freight. Its focus has
been exclusively in North America. The company started in
the LTL sector and expanded into truckload, rail, and parcel.
Chicago-based project44 is riding the wave of investor
interest in IT providers who allow shippers, carriers, and
intermediaries to exchange data through a single appli-
cation programming interface (API) format that links
their databases. Historically, stakeholders have relied on
third-party interfaces such as e-mail, faxes, and electronic
data interchange (EDI) to exchange shipment information.
By adding parcel, project44 is “rapidly stitching together
multimodal and multinational shipment workflows, pro-
viding access to standardized dynamic data that increases
the capacity and fluidity of entire supply chains and delivers
a more visible, predictable transportation experience,” the
company said in a statement.
