Flex, a Seattle start-up, is raising more money to support the market in which retailers buy on-demand storage space.
The company has raised $67.9 million in a larger round of financing, according to a new document from the securities and Exchange Commission. When geekwire contacted the company, it declined to comment on the document.
Supply chain management startups set a financing record last year because their software helped companies struggling with the volatility caused by the epidemic. During the influenza pandemic, flex’s online sales also showed a huge growth momentum.
Flex CEO Carl sibrecht. (flexible photo)
Earlier Thursday, coveray, a Seattle digital freight startup, announced a round of $260 million financing, valued at $3.8 billion.
Flex last raised cash at the end of 2020, bringing $80 million as part of round C financing.
Flex was founded in 2013 and claims to be a “warehouse as a service” company to help retailers turn traditional fixed expenses into variable costs. Its customers do not need to invest millions of dollars in long-term warehouse leasing; They just pay for what they need at a specific time.
This is similar to how pay as you go cloud computing services such as AWS or azure replace the company’s need to purchase and operate its own data center.
Karl siebrecht, chief executive of flex, previously told geekwire that “traditional warehousing is very similar to traditional data centers.”.
Flex also provides a way for companies to make inventory closer to where customers live, thereby reducing delivery time. This is important because Amazon continues to take 1-day and 2-day delivery as the industry standard.
“Measure the impact of same day delivery on revenue in different regions, expand new markets, and compete directly with Amazon without fixed investment risk,” the company said on its website.
Siebrecht was a former senior executive of aquantive and adrady, and he co founded the company with Edmond Yue and Francis Duong. They attended a housewarming party and met an entrepreneur who complained about finding a warehouse for his bar company. Siebrecht is a finalist for the geekwire award as CEO of the year.
Flex has 450 employees. Its previous investors include T. Rowe price, activate capital, tiger global, madrona venture group, redpoint ventures, ProLogis ventures, etc.
Other logistics and e-commerce software startups in Seattle have raised funds over the past few years, including shipium, logixboard, stackline, fabric, flavorcloud, pipe17, Pandion and soundcommerce.