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Today’s number is 10 million kilometers. Roughly 6 million miles. This is the milestone Starship Technologies recently hit with its robotic delivery.

Hello and welcome back to news, trends & insights in the industry.

In today’s edition:

• 3 Start-ups (Flyby, Covariant, Five TMS AI)

• 2 Old guards (GM, CMA-CGM)

• 1 Tech in robotic delivery (Starship)

• 1 Logistic Origins (Keith Tantlinger)

Let’s dive in.

In the Box

Five TMS AI boasts an all-in-one platform for shippers

For over 20 years, transportation management systems (TMS) were non-existent. Shippers used spreadsheets to enter data manually.

However, with the invention of Five TMS AI, as per a statement to FreightWaves, the artificial intelligence platform launched in March to reduce manual tasks and increase supply chain visibility for shippers.

“We wanted to establish a place where shippers could come and get everything done under only one software and only one subscription.” - Daniel Wellnitz, vice president at Five TMS AI.

Five TMS also offers a freight marketplace to connect shippers with reliable carriers.

Covariant closes $75m totaling the funding to $225m

The AI robotic company recently closed $75 million to ensure today’s logistics providers and retailers are able to deploy robotic picking and sorting without disrupting their current operations from Day One.

The funding was co-led by returning investors Radical Ventures and Index Ventures.

Other participants in the funding include:

• Canada Pension Plan Investment Board

• Amplify Partners

• Gates Frontier Holdings

• Northgate Capital

• AIX Ventures

“This infusion of new capital allows us to scale even faster, ensuring more retailers can automate more parts of their fulfillment networks to remove manual bottlenecks, handle fluctuating demand, and better prepare for ever-changing business needs.” - Peter Chen, CEO, Covariant

Since its Series C funding in 2021, Covarint has taken its AI platform - Covariant Brain, and applied it in retail,3PLs, and other warehousing operations for its customers.

Flyby Robotics raised a $4m pre-seed investment

The end-to-end drone and automation company has announced a $4 million pre-seed investment funding.

The funding was led by MaC Venture Capital with the participation of the following investors:

• Weekend Fund

• Anthemis

• Evening Fund

Notable individual funders include; Ryan Hoover (Founder at Product Hunt); Cliff Sirlin (Managing Director at LaunchCapital), Naval Ravikant, (Co-Founder of AngelList); Balaji Srinivasan, (Finance and former CTO of Coinbase); Karen Pritzker’s VC fund.

“Our AI-powered autonomous systems allow any merchant to dramatically reduce the cost of delivery to their customers.” - Jason Lu, Founder & CEO of Flyby Robotics.

The investment announced comes with a pilot launch with several partnerships across the US. This includes smoothies from Nekter Juice Bar, salad from MAD Greens, sushi from Tokyo Joe’s, and crunchy shiitake mushroom chips from Popadelics.

Side note: A $3 order from the retailers for drone delivery with a 4-minute timeline.

Technology

Starship Technologies clocks 10 million KM

Over a span of five years, the robotic delivery company announced it has closed 6 million miles or 10 million kilometers.

This milestone is way ahead of other autonomous delivery companies like Waymo and Cruise which have covered 1 million miles only.

Tech: Thanks to the company’s launch of the L4 level of autonomous driving in 2018, it recently announced one of its robots hit a record of 24 deliveries in 16 hours 100% autonomously.

Old Guards

General Motors (GM)

GM’s electric delivery startup BrightDrop has announced a delivery of 500 EVs from its CAMI assembly, in Ontario Canada having just opened three months ago.

Since the start-up launch two years, GM has received 30,000 reservations for its Zero Vans. It has more than 30 commercial customers including; Walmart, Hertz, DHL Express and Purolator American Tire Distributors, WasteNot Compost and Rexel USA, and FedEx.

BrightDrop was launched at CAMI in December 2022 and intends to produce 50,000 units by 2025.

“The quicker we can electrify commercial fleets, the quicker we’ll help combat climate change. We’re laser-focused on scaling production to deliver for our customers and the planet.” - BrightDrop Chief Commercial Officer Steve Hornyak

CMA -CGM

The ocean shipping and logistics provider CMA-CGM has announced a partnership with Air France- KLM.

The 10-year alliance between air cargo divisions under which they will market freighter capacity for a competitive edge and increase scale.

The strategic partnership which was made in May 2022, includes Martinair Cargo, an Air France -KLM subsidiary.

The Paris-based ocean shipping giant launched the CMA-CGM Air Cargo start-up to rival its competitor Maersk. Currently, it owns several planes for air shipping.

Logistics Origins

Cargo shipping container - Keith Tantlinger

Keith Tantlinger was a mechanical engineer born in 1919 in California who revolutionized the shipping industry by inventing cargo containers.

He held patents for over 70 instrumentations in the field of transportation and worked for the Douglas Aircraft Company during World War II. In the 1950s, he became the Vice President of Engineering at Brown Industries and later joined Malcolm Mclean's company, Sea-Land Service.

In the company, Keith designed a method of the container holding for marine cargo that would enhance the capacitance of the container itself and prove extremely viable in terms of costs to the shipping companies.

Tantlinger designed a novel locking technology and uniform containers that could be secured when stacked, which led to the development of the modern cargo shipping container.

His invention significantly improved the efficiency, capacity, and safety of cargo transportation and had a huge impact on global trade.

Thank you for reading.

My goal is to break down complex technologies in the logistics and supply chain industry. Hope it is worthwhile.

Over and out,

Okerosi