The investment from Raft’s Series B funding round will be used to develop and deploy automation products, improve data collaboration and deepen Raft’s market reach.
Venture capital investor Eight Roads led the funding round with participation from investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Episode 1, Dynamo Ventures and Moguntia Capital.
James Coombes, CEO and Co-Founder of Raft says that the platform was founded as an AI-first company to relieve pressure from freight forwarders and customs brokers so they could focus on serving their customers.
He says Raft has focused on the parts of the shipment lifecycle where automation has the highest ROI, realising that accounts payable reconciliation and customs entry preparation were pain points then growing the product to automate areas such as warehousing and booking confirmation.
Coombes says, “We quickly understood that our customers don’t want separate solutions for each of these areas, they want one AI-platform that offers best-in-class automation across the length and breadth of their business. That’s Raft.”
Raft says its platform has created an opportunity to bring its data and insights to the customer-facing side, which it has done by releasing the digital shipment portal to help freight forwarders and customs brokers provide greater visibility to customers.
Coombes says, “One thing we noticed is that our customers struggled to take the fragmented data that sits across their business and serve it digitally to their shipper end-customers. We have clean AI-standardised data, broad exposure across the shipment lifecycle, and existing integrations across the ecosystem, and so we felt like we were well placed to offer that.”
Raft’s shipment portal allows customers to share internal data and third-party data with end-customers, offering tools such as multi-source visibility, emissions reporting and quote-to-book all in one digital portal, which works seamlessly with their TMS.
Customers of Raft include 40% of the A&A’s Top 25 Global Freight Forwarders List and global customers including EMO Trans, OIA Global, The Scarborough Group, NNR Global Logistics and Navia Freight.