Tradeshift snares another $250 million in funding

The supply chain payment and finance platform provider’s Series E funding round, led by heavy hitters Goldman Sachs and PSP Investments, brings its total valuation to $1.1 billion.    Tradeshift, a provider of supply chain payment and finance platforms, has secured another $250 million in financing, the company announced late last week.
   The eight-year-old company’s Series E funding round, led by heavy hitters Goldman Sachs and Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments), brings its overall funding to more than $400 million and the company’s total valuation to $1.1 billion. Under the terms of the funding round, Mikkel Hippe Brun, Tradeshift’s GM of China and co-founder, will join the company’s board of directors.
   Additional participants in the firm’s latest funding round include existing investor HSBC, as well as H14, GP Bullhound and Gray Swan, a new venture company established by the founders of Tradeshift. Those investors join a list of previous backers that also includes American Express Ventures, the CreditEase Fintech Investment Fund, Notion Capital and Santander InnoVentures. 
   Tradeshift says it will use the new funding to “double down” on investments it believes will have the greatest impact on the future of logistics and international commerce, namely blockchain, artificial intelligence and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS).
   “Why? Everyone gets that the future will be networked and that everything will be apps. It’s one of the reasons why blockchain seems to be getting so much traction lately,” the company said in a statement announcing the new funding round. “Blockchain is also a part of the digital zeitgeist, both a driver of and response to a global demand for greater trust and transparency.
   “The bigger idea is one we have been true to for eight years: Supply chains of the future must run on a fully digitized platform of networked apps,” it added. “Our Frontiers division, launched in January 2018, is focused on enabling supply chain applications for blockchain and other emerging technologies.”
   The firm will also increase investment in its AI layer, dubbed “Tradeshift Ada,” in an effort to help users better utilize the mountains of data created by the digitization of supply chain information.
   “With AI, it’s all about the user experience,” the company said. “Digital means more data, but that data is useless if users can’t ask natural questions, get smart answers, and do both in a frictionless, organic way.”
   And perhaps most importantly, Tradeshift said it will continue to drive mainstream adoption of networked PaaS, in which a network of buyers and sellers use a connected network of applications to do business with one another around the world, one of the fundamental technologies on which the company was founded.
   The company will also use funding from the Series E round for “core strategic initiatives, including continued global expansion of Tradeshift in Europe and Asia and growth of transacted volume and value across our platform,” as well as mergers and acquisitions.
   Tradeshift said it currently sees “a number of M&A moves that would serve both our vision and our strategy” available to it.
   Started in a garage in Denmark and now claiming head offices in Copenhagen, San Francisco, New York, London, Amsterdam, Paris, Munich, Suzhou, Tokyo and Sydney, Tradeshift’s goal is to provide a platform that connects buyers and sellers to deliver end-to-end digitally enabled working capital solutions, most notably supply chain financing.
   Tradeshift last July entered into a global partnership with Banco Santander to provide supply chain financing via the firm’s open marketplace platform after inking a similar partnership with HSBC Holdings PLC in March.
   And just last week, the company launched the first cloud-based platform for connected supply chain payments, which is also the first platform of its kind to include blockchain-based finance in a single unified wallet of early payment options, according to Tradeshift.
   “As always, our vision has been to connect more companies and enable them to do business together with less friction,” Tradeshift said. “Our mission is to drive supply chain innovation for the digitally connected economy.
   “At Tradeshift, when we say supply chain we don’t just mean direct materials,” the company added. “We mean everything that happens between a buyer and a seller. We have always believed that the future of supply chains is 100 percent digital and that connecting trade is essential to the economy. The more companies that can easily connect to global supply chains, the more we can drive global diversity and opportunity.”