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US$13.5M Series A funding for staff and operations expansion raised by Expedock, a start-up that uses AI to transform documents into data for supply chain companies
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Funds injected by investors take the total to $17.5M, including $4M seed last year
Expedock, a start-up formed by three young tech wizards including two Filipinos, is revolutionizing the supply chain industry with a solution that has attracted a US$13.5 million market backing for its Series A fundraising as of August 12. The latest funding brings to $17.5 million the total funds raised by the company, including seed money of $4 million.
The three-year-old San Francisco, California-based Expedock uses AI to transform documents into data, making paperwork a fast and efficient process, saving time and money.
In Manila, Globe Telecom confirmed on August 18 the successful fundraising by Expedock. Globe Telecom owns venture capital firm Kickstart Ventures Inc, a minority shareholder in Expedock.
Globe said the funds raised will go to modernizing Expedock’s freight forwarding process.
The funds, in particular, are intended for the “expansion of Expedock’s team so that supply chain businesses could further understand their data more efficiently at scale,” Globe said. “Having the right automation partner will drive efficiency and profitability, reduce labor costs and help the industry keep up with today’s global shipper.”
Expedock co-founder and chief operating officer Jeff Tan said on LinkedIn recently that the funding will help it “unlock the power of automation and data for all supply chain companies.”
The Series A round was led by New York City-based venture capital firm Insight Partners. It attracted participating investors such as Neo and Pear, executives from Salesforce, Meta, eBay, Clearmetal, and Project44, as well as logistics giants MOL, Wilhelmsen, and HHLA through Motion Ventures.
The new product created by Tan, along with co-founders chief executive King Alandy Dy and chief technology officer Rui Aguiar, all in their 20s, has been welcomed warmly by supply chain and logistics players.
“Expedock is reinventing how supply chain businesses are able to harness their own data. Given our 600% growth this past year, we are going to do even better by bringing on engineers to expand our use-cases and our account executives to support more customers,” said Alandy Dy.
The end-result should be a modernized freight forwarding industry using AI to automate time-consuming tasks.
Recently, in a dinner with key partner Mallory Group in Memphis, Tennessee, Alandy Dy said he could not believe the transformation Expedock was doing to the supply chain industry after three years.
“We learned that while freight operators were skeptical at first, operators go from crying from overwork to crying tears of joy because our AI processed a 38-page commercial invoice at 99.97% accuracy.”
Alandy Dy said Mallory’s director of IT explained that the company had dropped a plan to hire 100 people. “Instead of hiring, they are using Expedock to turn their 300 superstar freight operators and customs brokers into super humans who focus on customer service and logistics,” he said.
In Nashville, the two Expedock executives met Sara Ireton and Alissa Martin, officers from the Ascent Group who had been working with Tan and key staff over the past two years identifying automation opportunities to drive adoption of Expedock’s document automation products.
Alandy Dy said Ascent’s international forwarding department subscribes to all of Expedock’s automation products for accounting, import and brokerage operations.
Expedock is the AI-powered automation service behind some of the leading players in the US$7 trillion supply chain.
Alandy Dy said thousands of freight and cargo containers are now being moved internationally every week via Expedock through its technology that eliminates inefficiencies by automating the manual processing and inputting of data into various systems at 99.99% accuracy.
Alandy Dy is enrolled in Stanford University taking up an Individualized Major in Engineering, Interaction Engineering and Design.
Tan graduated with BS Computer Science + Entrepreneurship at Ateneo de Manila in 2015.
Aguiar has now graduated from Stanford University with BS Computer Science focused on Artificial Intelligence.
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(This article was updated on April 14, 2024 to clarify the ownership setup between Globe Telecom, Kickstart Ventures and Expedock.)
