FarEye Inc., whose machine learning-powered logistics platform helps companies such as UPS Inc. process more than 100 million transactions a month, has raised $100 million in funding through a new funding round announced today.

TCV and Dragoneer Investment Group jointly led the Series E round. It’s not the first time the investment firms have teamed up: They both backed Airbnb Inc. prior to the company’s initial public offering in December. Dragoneer also counts major enterprise technology companies such as Snowflake Inc. and ServiceNow Inc. among its past investments. 

Chicago-based FarEye’s platform helps enterprises coordinate the movement of goods through their supply chains. One of its flagship features is what the startup describes as a low-code console for managing shipments. Through the console, supply chain teams can define organizationwide logistics procedures, for example a policy specifying that packages returned by customers should be sent to the company’s main warehouse rather than the nearest distribution center. 

FarEye also helps with the task of implementing logistics procedures after they’re defined. The startup’s platform can automatically assign individual shipments to the delivery companies on which a company relies to transport goods. Under the hood, FarEye optimizes delivery routes using artificial intelligence models that it says find the most efficient route based on factors such as the number of available trucks in a given area.

Supply chain teams have access to a dashboard for tracking shipments after they’re assigned. According to FarEye, companies can also use the shipment status information from its platform to provide order tracking features for their customers. The startup offers a pre-packaged set of features for building customer-facing order tracking applications, including an automated chatbot that can be configured to answer common questions.

FarEye argues that, by giving companies better visibility into their logistics operations, it can help them find opportunities to improve supply chain efficiency. The platform’s features for automating tasks such as assigning shipments to delivery companies promise similar benefits. Increasing supply chain efficiency lowers costs, which in turn makes it more practical for companies to roll out features such as same- and next-day shipping.

Speeding up package arrival times is a particular priority in the retail sector. Retailers are upgrading their supply chains to address the rapid growth in e-commerce and the growing competition from Amazon.com Inc., which offers free next-day shipping as part of its Prime program.

“The funding is very timely for the delivery and logistics sector as we have seen consumers spending $861 billion online with U.S. retailers in 2020, up 44% from $598 billion in 2019,” said FarEye co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Kushal Nahata. 

FarEye also has customers outside the retail sector. Its platform is used by logistics companies such as UPS and DHL International GmbH, as well as manufacturers that rely on the software to ship newly produced merchandise to their enterprise customers.

FarEye’s latest funding round is the latest in a series for startups offering technology that can help retailers and their partners more effectively address growing demand from online shoppers. It comes two months after FourKites Inc., which also provides software for optimizing supply chain operations, raised a $100 million round from investors that included Qualcomm Inc. and Volvo Group.

Photo: Unsplash