Startups

Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, as stepped down from being chairman of Virgin Hyperloop One, stating that the company needs a more “hands-on chair” to invest in its growth.

Since its launch, Convoy has been innovating with technological solutions aimed at reinventing the way freight moves across the country. To help fulfill that mission, the company is now expanding beyond its Seattle, WA, roots to a second office located in Atlanta.

Uber Freight introduces three new features to its app, making it more customizable and intuitive, and helping drivers and carriers better manage their loads and time schedules.

Incongruent payment cycles make it hard for low-credit businesses to fund their operations. BAM is a Fintech solution for the world’s oldest method of raising capital, factoring.

XPO Logistics was named to the Fortune Future 50 list of U.S. public companies while KeepTruckin and Transfix were both honored by Forbes as two companies likely to achieve unicorn status.

Trump government looks to phase out IMO2020 sulfur cap regulations; Shanghai Composite Index crashes by 3%; Amazon revisting cities for finalizing HQ2.

Uber Inc. has introduced Powerloop, an affiliate company to Uber Freight, which would rent out power-only trailers to carriers looking to grow their business and thereby ease the industry’s capacity crunch.

The FreightWaves Research Institute has announced the list of 55 voters who will be choosing the inaugural winners of the Freight.Tech 25 awards, and it’s who’s who of freight leaders.

Though blockchain is a technology with immense potential, there needs to be some commercial incentive for food supply chains to adopt it in its mainstream processes – the absence of which might let the technology remain constrained to pilot programs.

Also in today’s issue: a beating shows the dangers to truckers, even off the road; an Indian company looks to disrupt that company’s trucking sector.

VAYAVISION, an Israeli startup that works on providing raw data fusion and perception systems for autonomous vehicles has raised $8 million in seed financing, which it plans to invest in its productization process.

From on-demand trucking to blockchain, loadboards and freight matching, the list of companies bringing innovative technologies to the freight industry is growing by the day, which makes the 100 that have made the cut to be honored by the FreightWaves Research Institute as part of its inaugural Freight.Tech 100 all the more special.

35 companies are being spotlighted in Venture Atlanta 2018, double the number of last year. These companies are already successful and making strides in a variety of venture and tech-related firms. Here’s a brief look at 10 of these companies, each of whom had a mere 5 minutes to pitch.

It started with an open nomination period, and after culling through hundreds of submissions, the FreightWaves Research Institute has announced the inaugural Freight.Tech 100 companies.

Dave DeWalt has been a part of creating 17,000 jobs, $20 billion in shareholder value, $2 billion in revenue, and has 32 years in high tech.

As e-bike sharing startups flush cities with bikes for rent at dirt cheap prices, city administrations need to take a look in and understand the impact an unregulated e-biking scene could have on its roads.

Avancargo, a freight logistics startup from Argentina has on-boarded over 18,000 trucks on its platform and is helping them connect with shippers digitally.

The Indian trucking ecosystem suffers from a lack of visibility and transparency, which Vaahika is looking to address by digitizing logistics and creating a bridge between carriers and shippers.

Edge technology and infrastructure will play a key role in everything from autonomous, to final-mile delivery applications, to IoT solutions and smart cities as a whole.

Netradyne, a startup that uses computer vision to understand and improve driver behavior, has raised $21 million in its Series B funding, led by Microsoft’s venture arm, M12.