San Francisco-based Flexport announced plans Tuesday to open a Chicago office this March in Fulton Market, a move that would bring 100 jobs to the area within the next two years.
Flexport makes a software that allows air freight shippers to track their goods in real time. Besides San Francisco and Chicago, the company has three other offices in the U.S.—in Atlanta, Los Angeles and New York—and four international offices in Amsterdam, Hamburg, Hong Kong and Shenzhen. They employ about 600 people globally, the company said.
The company, founded in 2013, said it chose Chicago for its fifth U.S. office because the Midwest and Chicago are some of the biggest hubs for air freight. O’Hare International Airport processes more than 1.5 million tonnes of freight every year, Flexport said. And the amount is projected to increase by 50 percent in coming years.
“The opening of the Chicago office will enable Flexport to further develop relationships with local partners, and to better serve clients in the region for both import and export cargo across all modes of transit,” the company said in a statement.
Flexport chose to put the office in the city’s Fulton Market neighborhood because the area has increasingly become one of the top neighborhoods that various startup and tech companies have chosen to establish offices in. The office will sit at 171 N. Aberdeen St. Fulton Market is home to Google’s Chicago office, The Escape Pod and Glassdoor, among many others.
Flexport is hiring for sales, operations and other roles for the new local office, which will be led Taylor Oliver, the company’s senior director of accounts.
"The Chicago metropolitan area is also one of the fastest-growing technology centers in the country, and we're looking to hire the very best people to join Flexport and help fix the user experience in global trade,” said Ryan Petersen, CEO and founder of Flexport, in a statement.
In September, the company raised $110 million in a Series C round from investors such as, DST Global and Founders Fund, bringing its total funding to more than $204 million, according to Crunchbase. The company says it has doubled its employee headcount in the last year and is hiring for positions across all its offices.
