In one of the more shocking recent corporate tech implosions, venture darling Convoy locked its doors and let 500 employees go in mid-October.
Convoy was a high-flying Seattle-based company founded by former Amazon execs Dan Lewis and Grant Goodale in 2015.
The company provided an Uber-like service linking truckers with space on their trailers with shippers looking to ship less than a full trailer load of goods.
The idea attracted lots of big investors including Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates and caused its market value to go as high as $3.8 billion before market pressures crushed the company.
CEO Dan Lewis had been actively trying to sell the company before being forced to close its doors.
Now one of those suitors, Flexport, a supply-chain and logistics tech company, has snapped up the remaining pieces of Convoy including its entire technology stack and fifteen of its remaining employees, including Lewis.
Flexport CEO Ryan Peterson in a public blog states, “We are not acquiring Convoy the company or any of its liabilities, and our expenses will be limited to what’s necessary to maintain the tech.”
San Francisco-based Flexport is a venture darling in its own right, having raised a reported $2.3 billion in venture funding with a market value of $8 billion.
In 2018, Flexport was the 8th fastest-growing company in the country, and in 2019 was named one of CNBC’s Disruptor 50.
With the addition of the Convoy software, Flexport expands its ability to control a great bulk of the supply chain through access to Convoy’s 400,000 trucking clients.
Peterson added, “Flexport’s strategy will be to offer a full range of trucking services to our customers who value us as a one-stop-shop for global logistics.”
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