It’s being referred to as “Uber for Trucks,” and it’s caught the attention of two of the world’s richest men: Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.
Convoy, a two-year-old Seattle-based startup, is a trucking logistics company that matches nearby drivers with shipping jobs. Much like Uber, the Convoy app allows truckers to either accept or decline a job on a case-by-case basis.
But Gates and Bezos aren’t the only ones with their eye on Convoy. Other billionaire investors include Marc Benioff, Barry Diller, and Henry Kravis. What’s more, just last week the company announced that it raised $62 million in a Series B round led by Y Combinator’s Continuity Fund.
So what has investors chomping at the bit to invest in this market? In large part, it’s the fact that this type of on-demand service is likely going to be the future of freight.
“The market opportunity is huge, and trucking is a space that has not had any innovation in two decades,” said Anu Hariharan, a partner at the Y Combinator Continuity Fund.
“The problem we are solving is that the industry itself is massive, but it’s completely fragmented,” said Dan Lewis, co-founder and CEO of Convoy. “For [the investors] to look at this and say, ‘that makes sense’ is a testament to what we’re doing.”
Of course, Convoy isn’t without its competition. Ridesharing company Uber has launched its own version of the Convoy app called Uber Freight. However, Uber is only two months into its new service and still has a long way to go before it can catch up to the level of infrastructure Convoy has already built.
“We’ve learned an incredible amount already and are continuing to recruit the top minds in the industry as we ramp up our investment in this technology,” an Uber spokeswoman told Bloomberg Technology.
Convoy and Uber are also looking into self-driving trucks. However, both admit that type of technology is still far in the future.
