Project44 lands $45 million in venture funds to reinforce growth in API network

Logistics technology vendor Project44 said today it has landed $45 million in financing—just six months after collecting a $35 million round—and plans to spend the new capital to reinforce its growth in the transportation visibility market by funding continued growth in North America, supporting new product initiatives in advanced visibility, and driving international expansion.

The investment was led by the venture capital firm Sapphire Ventures, with participation from Insight Venture Partners and from existing investors 8VC, Chicago Ventures, Emergence Capital, Omidyar Technology Ventures, OpenView Venture Partners, and Pritzker Group Venture Capital.

Altogether, investors have pumped over $90 million into Project44's software platform, an online network which automates the flow of data among shippers, carriers, and third party logistics providers (3PLs) by allowing its customers to get data through application programming interfaces (APIs) that directly link computer databases instead of relying on third-party interfaces, such as email or electronic data interchange (EDI).

"Project44 will not merely participate in this newly developed visibility category, but will define, grow, and lead it," said Kevin Diestel, a partner at Sapphire Ventures who will now join the Chicago-based company's board of directors. "P44 is bringing to the shipping and logistics space what Stripe brought to payments, Twilio brought to communications, and Mulesoft brought to SaaS applications," he said in a statement.