FreightTech startup Cargado announced Monday it has secured $6.8 million in seed funding that will be used to expand its team and enhance the company’s product.
The seed round was led by Primary Venture Partners with participation from existing investors Ironspring Ventures, Zenda Capital, Wischoff Ventures and Proeza Ventures, along with new investor Ryder Ventures.
Cargado secured $3 million in pre-seed funding in January.
Cargado was founded by CEO Matt Silver and Rylan Hawkins, chief technology officer, in October 2023. Silver declined to reveal how Cargado will specifically operate in the cross-border space for the moment, but said the sector is ripe for logistics technology innovation.
“We see so many different problems and opportunities with cross-border freight,” Silver said. “I have a really strong understanding of all the problems that go into every part of the process of moving freight between the U.S. and Mexico. We’re excited to be building technology that operators involved in the cross-border process can leverage to do their jobs better, to make more money and grow their businesses, and to generally be able to be more efficient and successful.”
Related: Matt Silver launches US-Mexico logistics tech startup Cargado
Zach Fredericks, a principal at Primary Venture Partners, said Silver has been on his radar since Forager, a Chicago-based, venture-backed FreightTech company Silver founded in 2018.
“At Primary Venture Partners, our investment thesis is built around investing in the technology that reduces the transaction costs of building a more durable supply chain,” Fredericks told FreightWaves.
Prior to joining Primary Venture Partners in January 2023, Fredericks spent over three years working in product management at on-demand freight marketplace Loadsmart.
“We think there’s just this tremendous opportunity for software, for AI, for data infrastructure, for marketplaces, for financial technology to reduce a lot of that pain that comes with building more durability and optionality into your supply chain,” Fredericks said.
“One of the biggest things we have our eyes on is nearshoring. The growth in trade between Mexico and the U.S. and Canada has been pretty remarkable in the last couple of years. We think that with all the foreign direct investment moving into Mexico, that nearshoring is not going to change. Right now, we just don’t see enough technology being built to streamline logistics between Mexico and the U.S. We’re really excited about the broader vision of just streamlining North American logistics into a platform where a lot of the complexity and pain of finding new parties to do business with for transportation is simpler and results in less cost.”
Silver said the seed funding will be invested in more data engineers, as well as additional sales, accounting and support staff. Cargado currently has about half a dozen employees, based in Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle and Laredo, Texas.
Silver said Cargado’s headquarters will be in Chicago and the company plans to open an office in Monterrey, Mexico.
Cargado actually launched its still-unrevealed product about a month ago to its growing roster of customers and users.
“The feedback has been exceptionally positive. One of the comments that we’ve heard a lot has been that the product is built in an intuitive way,” Silver said. “I’ve spent 17 years in freight. Ryan was at Convoy for seven and a half years, so we have a really good understanding of the ins and outs of freight, and what an operator needs to be able to do and communicate in the information that they want to be able to store and share. We were very intentional about making sure that it was built that way.”
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