Supply chain payments specialist Tradeshift has raised $250 million (approx. £188 million) in a Series E funding round, the San Francisco-headquartered company announced in a release today.
The fresh funding round was led by Goldman Sachs and Canadian pension fund giant PSP Investments, with further participation from HSBC, H14, GP Bullhound, and Gray Swan, a venture company established by Tradeshift’s founders. It values the company at a new high of $1.1 billion.
“Given the rapid increase in B2B online transactions, online marketplaces are no longer just for consumers. Tradeshift has established itself as a leader in supply chain commerce by enabling corporations around the globe to take greater control of their supply chains,” said Darren Cohen, Goldman Sachs’s global head of principal strategic investments.
The news comes just over a week after the company unveiled a unified cloud-based supply chain payments and finance product, “Tradeshift Pay”, that is compatible with all major blockchain technologies including ethereum and hyperledger.
Tradeshift CEO Christian Lanng, who co-founded the company in 2009, said of the funding: “We are very happy with this validation of our vision. We have always believed that the future of supply chains is 100 percent digital and that connecting trade is just the first step to a digitally connected economy. This investment will enable us to continue our rapid growth and consolidate our leadership position.”
Tradeshift enables supply chain payments and marketplaces for more than 1.5 million businesses globally, including Fortune 1000 brands Air France-KLM, DHL, Fujitsu, HSBC, Siemens, Societe Generale, Unilever, and Volvo.
The company’s solutions support trade financing, spend and receivables management, lending and payments, and private marketplaces, and aim to help unlock the $9 trillion of capital estimated to be trapped in online payments.
The new investors join existing backers, including HSBC, American Express Ventures, the CreditEase Fintech Investment Fund, Notion Capital, Santander InnoVentures, and others. It brings total funding thus far to $400 million.
Mikkel Hippe Brun, the company’s co-founder and Tradeshift’s GM of China will join Tradeshift’s board of directors.
The funding round will be used for core strategic initiatives, including continued global expansion of Tradeshift in Europe and Asia; growth of transacted volume and value across its platform; and strategic investments into emerging technologies, including blockchain and artificial intelligence via its Frontiers division, which was launched in January 2018.
