St. Louis-based Freight Science, a startup that has developed a data science platform to help the trucking industry optimize operations, plans to expand its team and technology after raising $4 million in a funding round.
Freight Science received its investment from Nashville-based venture capital firm Fintop Capital, which has an office in St. Louis. Founded in 2020, Freight Science has developed software that uses data and artificial intelligence to create mathematical models designed to help freight carriers make decisions on how best to run their businesses.
“Our objective is to augment human decision making in some of the most important operational functions these firms have, such as customer service, account management and planning,” said Adrian Cartier, chief data science officer of Freight Science. “These businesses are critical to the U.S. infrastructure, and our mission is to assist them in operating profitably despite market conditions and to leverage technology and analytics to scale through the volatility.”
CEO Matt Foster, who has prior experience working in the technology and logistics industries, said he decided to launch Freight Science in 2020 after an industry downturn in the prior year caused several hundred trucking companies to go out of business. Foster said witnessing those struggles led him to believe there was an opportunity for the industry to better integrate technology to improve operations.
Freight Science teamed with local technology consultancy Ocelot Consulting to develop its product. Foster said Ocelot provided capital and staff for the startup’s initial team to help it reach commercialization.
Freight Science launched its data science platform in July 2021, and Foster said it has added as a client one major trucking carrier every other month. He declined to disclose the company’s customers, but said they are some of the “most reputable names in the industry.” He said the fresh capital will allow Freight Science “to accelerate the onboarding process for the backlog of demand we currently have.”
Freight Science currently has about 20 employees, and Foster said it hopes to expand to 35 by the middle of the third quarter this year. It plans to add employees in sales, customer support, software and data engineering and data science. It also plans to use its funding to enhance and expand its technology.
Foster said Freight Science was attracted to bringing on Fintop as an investor because of its partners’ backgrounds as business operators and their acute sense of the opportunities and challenges the startup faces.
“It was a very comfortable conversation, being able to talk to them about what we had done right, where we’re obviously going to need some help and some guidance,” Foster said. “Everything we described they had seen multiple times. There was just an immediate level of comfort there."
