The Supply Chain Matters blog features our May 12, 2023 edition of This Week in Supply Chain Management Tech, a synopsis capsule of noteworthy supply chain management focused technology news.
After our most recent published edition on April 14, the tech news cycle related to supply chain business processes and decision-making continues in earnest despite the challenges of equity investment markets. On May 4, we featured for readers the industry breaking news that Flexport will acquire the logistics the logistics fulfillment operations of online retail platform provider Shopify.
In this edition, we include six added news capsule events that has occurred across the supply chain technology spectrum:
Livent Corp. to Combine with Allkem Ltd. in Lithium Supply Tie-Up
DHL Supply Chain to Acquire an Additional 5,000 Locus Autonomous Robots
Pando Raises $30 Million Series B Funding
PreAct Technologies Closes Second Series B Round
Resilinc Announces Strategic Growth Investment
Prewave Announces Series A+ Funding
Livent Corp. to Combine with Allkem Ltd. in Lithium Supply Tie-Up
U.S. based Livent Corp. and Australia based Allkem Ltd. announced a in all-stock merger agreement to create a lithium exploration and mining operation estimated to be valued at $10.6 billion.
This merger will reportedly include lithium mines and deposits located in Australia Canada, and South America and result in the third largest global lithium producer. Reportedly shareholders of Livent will control 44 percent of the combined company while shareholders of Allkem controlling 56 percent. The combined company is to be headquartered in North America and be listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
Livent CEO Paul Graves will reportedly lead the combined company. Speaking to The Wall Street Journal, “Mr. Graves said bringing together Alkem and Livent would create a company with greater scale, a larger product range and wider geographic footprint to meet the growth in lithium demand.” Mr. Graves indicated in an interview with Bloomberg that the combined entity will have a “focus on building a supply chain in the Americas, as US automakers look for non-Chinese sources of the battery metal. America-centric is a big differentiator for us with customers, with investors.”
This tie-up is reportedly expected to close by the end of 2023.
DHL Supply Chain to Acquire an Additional 5,000 Locus Autonomous Robots
European based logistics services provider DHL Supply Chain announced the expansion of partnership with Massachusetts based Locus Robotics, a provider of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), increasing its use of Locus AMR robotics within its supply chain operations. As part of this new partnership, DHL Supply Chain will deploy 5,000 Locus Origin AMRs across its global network of warehouses and distribution centers, reportedly the industry’s largest AMR deal to date.
DHL has reportedly now surpassed more than 250 million units picked using the LocusONE robotics technology across its global sites. The deployment of the new LocusBots is expected to be fully integrated into DHL Supply Chain’s operations by the end of this year.
Backed by GIC Singapore, Tiger Global, Qualcomm Ventures, and Falcon Edge, Locus Robotics has helped many global customers across industries.
Pando Raises $30 Million Series B Funding
Supply chain software provider, Pando, has announced its Series B funding amounting to $30 million, bringing total capital raised thus far, to $45 million. The announcement is significant given the current challenged equity investment environment, especially a Series B event.
Pando provides an AI-powered, no-code Fulfillment Cloud platform aimed to provide manufacturers, retailers, and 3PLs with a single pane of glass to streamline the end-to-end order-to-fulfillment process, to improve service levels, and reduce carbon footprint and costs. As a partner of choice for Fortune 500 enterprises globally, with a presence across APAC and the U.S.. Lighthouse customers are noted as Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, Nestle, Nivea, Accuride, Danaher, Perfetti Van Melle, and BP Castrol. This provider is further recognized in the listing of the fastest-growing technology companies by Deloitte.
The latest round was led by Silicon Valley investors Iron Pillar and Uncorrelated Ventures, with participation from existing investors Nexus Venture Partners, Chiratae Ventures and Next47. Reportedly, several prominent U.S. CEOs and angel investors also participated in the round including David Dorman, Chairman of CVS Health and Director on the Boards of Dell and Paypal, Tom Noonan, Director on the Boards of the New York Stock Exchange and SalesLoft, Scott Kirk of Bain Capital, Paul Brown of Dunkin’, Baskin-Robbins and Neiman Marcus, Nick Mehta of Gainsight, and Amar Goel of Pubmatic.
Proceeds from this latest equity infusion will reportedly be utilized to expand this tech provider’s growth across North America, Europe and Asia along with expanded industries.
PreAct Technologies Closes Second Series B Round
PreAct Technologies, a provider of near-field software-definable flash LiDAR technology, announced the second close of the company’s Series B funding round.
This tech provider’s patent-pending suite of sensor technologies provides high resolution, affordable LiDAR solutions to a wide range of industries including automotive, healthcare, ITS, industrial, consumer electronics, robotics and trucking. The firm is headquartered in Portland, Oregon, with offices in Ashburn, Virginia, Rochester, New York and Barcelona, Spain.
In January of 2023, PreAct acquired computer vision and gesture recognition technology provider Gestoos, which combines a powerful AI algorithm development platform with PreAct’s flash LiDAR to solve difficult vision needs such as in-cabin, cargo monitoring and other needs.
This event was led by I Squared Capital. PreAct raised a total of $20 million in Series B with participation from previous investors State Farm Ventures®, Luminate, and Traylor Capital among other new and existing investors.
In addition, the company has established its new European headquarters in Barcelona, Spain.
Resilinc Announces Strategic Growth Investment
Silicon Valley based Resilinc, a provider of supply chain mapping, disruption sensing, and resiliency analytics software technology has announced a strategic growth investment from Vista Equity Partners (“Vista”).
The investment was made by Vista’s Endeavor Fund, which provides growth capital and strategic support to market-leading, high-growth enterprise software, data, and technology-enabled companies that have achieved at least $10 million in recurring revenue.
This tech provider’s supply chain risk and resiliency technology is reportedly utilized by hundreds of multinational organizations across the High-Tech, Life Sciences, Defense, Aerospace, Automotive, and Healthcare industries. Named customers include Danaher, Keysight Technologies, and Stellantis. Resilinc has also established dozens of partnerships to drive supply chain resiliency with technology and services organizations and associations including Blue Yonder, Blume Global, Snowflake, Genpact, and SEMI.
Resilinc will reportedly utilize the latest growth capital to accelerate product innovation, talent, and go-to-market functions to meet the growing demand for more resilient, sustainable, secure, and transparent supply chains.
Prewave Announces Series A+ Funding
Vienna, Austria based Prewave, an AI-powered supply chain risk platform announced the completion of an € 18 million Series A+ funding event.
The investment round was led by Creandum, a European based early-stage investor, along with existing investors Ventech, KOMPAS, Segnalta, Speedinvest, Working Capital Fund, and xista science ventures. This round follows an € 11 million Series A funding event that occurred eight months prior.
Founded in 2017, this tech start-up aims to be an all-inclusive technology for managing supply chain risks by identifying, analyzing and mitigating such risks for customers in real time. A proprietary “crawler” secures publicly available information across dozens of languages assesses and provides a supplier risk score that changes over time. Named customers included AB InBEV, BMW, PwC, Lufthansa and Volkswagen.
This concludes our latest edition of Supply Chain Matters This Week In Supply Chain Tech.
Bob Ferrari
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