A local fuel procurement and management platform closed new financing this week co-led by Pritzker Group Venture Capital and Tribeca Venture Partners.
The startup, Fuel Me LLC, wants to lead the next evolution in energy distribution with its artificial intelligence-driven platform that uses predictive ordering to ensure efficient fuel delivery. The platform offers centralized purchasing, operational analytics and streamlined procurement.
Fuel Me's $18 million Series A round included new investors such as Bessemer Venture Partners, Interplay Venture Capital, FJ Labs, Hyde Park Angels, Bridge Ventures, Correlation Ventures, Forefront Venture Partners and Gaingels.
Brian Hirsch, co-founder and partner at Tribeca Venture Partners, will also join the board of Fuel Me as a result of the new financing.
"This category is massive in size, and Fuel Me has a significant first-mover advantage as the only national digital marketplace in the space," said Chris Girgenti, managing partner of Pritzker Group Venture Capital, said in a statement.
Founded in 2020, Fuel Me has completed more than 20,000 fuel deliveries with consistent growth year after year.
"We saw a need for this technology," Boy Schook, chief operating officer for Fuel Me, told Chicago Inno. "We would ask multinational companies and Fortune 500s about how many gallons they consumed last year, and they were like 'We don't know.' No one was providing a cloud-based marketplace for fuel."
After an initial seed round through friends and family and self-funding, things went "very quickly" for Fuel Me.
"We had 5x revenue growth year-over-year," Schook said.
Fuel Me now has a team of 60 employees.
Schook said he's very proud of the investors that Fuel Me now has, especially considering how difficult it is to raise in the current climate.
"The relationship with Pritzker has been amazing," he said. "They have introduced us to a bunch of other investors. We have been very careful with who we selected because we wanted to work with people that didn't just bring money but also people that we knew we were going to be able to grow with and to work with."
Schnook said Fuel Me is focused on expanding its market share in 2024.
"We have very aggressive growth for the next three to four years. We're expecting to hire more people to grow the team and we're currently working on AI integration into our system," he said.
