Digital provide chain supplier Beacon raises $50M

Beacon, a U.Ok.-based digital supply chain and freight platform maker, revealed on October 4 that it has raised $50 million in a sequence B funding spherical, led by Northstar.vc.

Beacon’s software program is designed to optimize digital provide chains with insights and visibility. The cloud-based platform gives a freight forwarding service throughout all modes built-in with its end-to-end visibility platform, connecting every stage of the availability chain to ship a report of all the data groups want. The platform connects bookings to order management, stay monitoring, and doc administration.

Upper90 additionally participated as a brand new investor. Beacon stated that the recent capital might be used to develop its workforce, proceed know-how improvement, and develop into new markets.

Since finishing its sequence A in early 2020, Beacon stated it has skilled quick development on account of surging buyer demand. Income has grown 12x within the final yr, the corporate stated, and headcount has elevated from 24 to 180 — together with enlargement into Asia with a brand new workplace in Hong Kong.

Present buyers additionally taking part within the sequence B spherical embody Jeff Bezos, founder and govt chair of Amazon, and Marc Benioff, founder, chairman, and CEO of Salesforce, along with U.S. enterprise capital corporations 8VC and Expa.

Digital provide chains rising in significance

The transformation of logistics and digital provide chains from servers to the cloud started earlier than the onset of COVID-19, however the pandemic has accelerated this evolution. The persevering with shift to on-line retail, mixed with sky-high freight charges, and shopper demand for sooner, extra dependable supply instances, has positioned extraordinary stress on companies and their provide chains. Probably the most efficient methods for companies to compete on this new setting, Beacon stated, is with full, digital visibility of their provide chains and logistics operations.

“We established Beacon to rework how companies handle their digital provide chain and logistics operations,” Beacon cofounder and CEO Fraser Robinson, a former Uber govt, stated in a media advisory. “Since then, the COVID-19 pandemic has introduced into the highlight the significance of resilient, dependable, and clear world provide chains, which has solely served to strengthen the necessity for our know-how and repair.”

“We’ve seen excessive ranges of demand all through the pandemic, and within the final yr we have now considerably grown our workforce, product, and geographical presence with a purpose to meet this demand, whereas offering first-class customer support. These new funds will allow us to additional speed up development by persevering with to put money into our individuals and platform in order that we are able to proceed our mission to revolutionize the worldwide provide chain.”