The supply chain visibility startup FourKites, with headquarters in Chicago and Chennai, has received a strategic investment from FedEx. The two businesses will also collaborate to improve supply chains by gaining visibility into operations. The company will use the cash and the relationship, according to FourKites founder and CEO Mathew Elenjickal in a blog post, “to realise our common mission to increase consumer value and make the world’s supply chains more resilient.”

This is not the first time a major IT giant has invested strategically in FourKites. According to the CEO’s blog post, it has also gotten similar financing from Qualcomm Ventures and Zebra Technologies. The partnership comes at a time when supply chain operations around the globe have been impacted by the pandemic, post-congestion, the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, and other geopolitical challenges.

Currently serving more than 1,000 clients, FourKites offers a real-time visibility platform that can handle 2.5 million shipments per day. Additionally, 50% of the Fortune 500 firms collaborate with the startup. According to the startup, this partnership will enable it to use FedEx data with machine learning and artificial intelligence skills.

Every one of these deliveries is a data gold trove, according to Sriram Krishnasamy, CEO of FedEx Dataworks. It should be emphasised that with 16.5 million shipments per day, FedEx connects 220 countries and territories, or more than 99 per cent of the global GDP.

The businesses will work together to develop FourKites X, a brand-new end-to-end supply chain intelligence platform. This will give shippers and logistics companies access to resources and knowledge. Planning and pre-shipment, visibility and proactive alerts, supply chain optimisation analytics, and other solutions will be available from the companies under the FourKites X package.