Project44 has $35 million in new funding that it will use to power supply chain visibility and deliver a faster and more reliable global shipping experience.
OpenView has led the financing, with additional investment from new investor 8VC, and existing investors Emergence Capital, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar’s firm Omidyar Technology Ventures, Chicago Ventures, and Pritzker Group Venture Capital.
Project44 (p44) says it brings dynamic shipment data and true supply chain visibility to a black box industry. By distilling the complexity of a shipment into six universal automations that remedy the industry’s most immediate pain points – pricing, routing, scheduling, tracking, delivery documentation, and payments – project44 delivers a more visible and predictable transportation experience.
“In today’s connected world, data is power. The amount of information available to an organization and its ability to glean insight from its data is what separates any company from its competition,” said Jim Baum, venture partner at OpenView who joins the p44 board. “P44 is building a category-defining company. We invested because their unique approach provides customers the ability to unearth, manage, analyze and act upon all of their data, regardless of where it originated or resides.”
GE Transportation is realizing these strategic benefits, and in turn, adding value to their customers, as project44 stitches together multimodal and multinational shipment workflows. “With project44, we take a step closer to providing a more visible and reliable port-to-door ecosystem,” said Jennifer Schopfer, vice president and general manager of GE Transportation Transport Logistics. “We can seamlessly and instantly connect transportation data from railroad networks, yards, intermodal terminals, and maritime ports into a single transportation management workflow.”
“Our goal from day one has been to create opportunities for individuals, companies, and communities by reimagining how to execute in a way that hasn’t been done before,” said project44 CEO and Founder Jett McCandless. “We’ve sought out the best investors to accelerate our ability to help global enterprises turn dynamic data into transportation opportunities, creating a more productive and successful world.”
While project44 has expanded its North American coverage to include rail and parcel shipments, in addition to full truckload, less-than-truckload (LTL) and Volume LTL, they have also grown revenue by more than 446% in the last 12 months. Customers include many of the world’s leading enterprises such as GE Transportation, Uline, Technicolor, ABB, Steelcase, Echo Global Logistics, RR Donnelley, Worldwide Express, Schneider Logistics, and GlobalTranz, among others.
With visibility into everything from pricing and scheduling through in-transit tracking and payments, p44 customers know more than just when shipments will arrive at their destination. For a customer such as Technicolor, one of the world’s largest media and entertainment providers shipping inventory into the world’s top retailers such as Target and Walmart on a daily basis, that seamless and wide-ranging visibility is the lynchpin of their success in today’s on-demand economy.
“To meet the strict delivery deadlines, we need to have real-time visibility into every single SKU and box in our supply chain,” stated Elaine Singleton, vice president of supply chain at Technicolor. “Project44 enables us to collect extensive information from disparate parts of our transportation network including shipments in pre- and post-transit stages. We automatically marry that data with our inventory databases to provide one single big picture view of everything that matters across our entire supply chain.”
