Milwaukee smart packaging startup
PAXAFE announced it has raised $2.25 million in a seed funding round.
The round, which was led by Palo Alto-based VC firm Ubiquity Ventures, brings PAXAFE’s total funds raised to $3.2 million, the company said Friday.
PAXAFE offers a software and hardware platform that enables predictive routing, time of arrival and adverse event prediction for B2B shipments. The company said it will use the capital to accelerate the rollout of its commercial platform to more customers and strengthen its AI-driven prediction models.
Using the platform, a shipper locks its high-value item into its package, and an online portal linked to a barcode on the package includes the shipment information. The receiver can track the package location and see whether it has been dropped using the portal.
PAXAFE said its solution is different than others in the market, which alert stakeholders when something goes wrong with their shipment but don’t inform them of the “how” and “why” of the problem.
“Without a precise and automated diagnosis, B2B shippers find it virtually impossible to build accurate and consistent prediction models that enable supply chain risk mitigation across future shipments,” the company said.
PAXAFE co-founders Ilya Preston and Ashok Seetharam
combined their experience – Preston’s in supply chain and Seetharam’s in hardware – to launch the company in 2018. They moved the company headquarters from Minnesota to Milwaukee in 2019 after completing gener8tor’s accelerator program.
Over the past six months, PAXAFE said it has launched a series of paid pilots with enterprises in various industries, including health care, perishables, oil & gas, logistics, manufacturing, jewelry and insurance. The company has also recently launched its commercial version of its platform, converting some of its pilot customers to commercial partners.
"Supply chain visibility brought us here today, but contextualization is the future," Preston said in an announcement Friday. "This new funding will allow us to expand our team with people who are passionate about our mission to redefine supply chain risk management."
