8VC and Schneider Revolutionize the Digital Supply Chain

The Companies Announce Platform Science as First Shared Investment

8VC, a venture capital firm enabling industry transformation through technology investment, today announced a partnership with Schneider SNDR, a premier provider of truckload, intermodal and logistics services, to redefine the future of trucking. 8VC and Schneider share the common goals of leveraging technology to create massive efficiency improvements in the well-established trucking industry, as well as creating a pathway toward a fully digital supply chain. Their combined knowledge brings together a rare mix of expertise in complex industries, and a pattern of successful strategic innovation enabled by technology.

Through investments like Wish, OpenGov, and Blink Health, 8VC has demonstrated the ability to support founders with strategy while imparting its culture of "future-first innovation" to complex, incumbent-led industries that have not fully captured the benefits of Silicon Valley's innovation ecosystem. Schneider brings over eighty years of industry leadership and deep domain expertise to the partnership, reflected by a track record of delivering exceptional value to customers through early technology adoption.

8VC and Schneider's first shared effort is focused on the development of the future of connected logistics. 8VC and Schneider have each invested in Platform Science, a company that provides an Internet of Things (IoT) connected ecosystem that enables the digital supply chain and makes transportation smarter. Vehicles utilizing Platform Science technology become intelligent edge computing assets that consume and contribute data to the supply chain in real time, unlocking valuable data to increase performance, streamline tasks, and improve time management, savings, and driver satisfaction.

In addition to its investment in Platform Science, Schneider also served as a strategic partner during development of the product, and contributed intellectual property to the venture. Schneider is also piloting the service with its West Coast fleet.

"Schneider has always been a pace-setter for the transportation, logistics and supply chain industries. We believe that pushing the technology envelope in pursuit of the best results for our customers and drivers is our core competency and responsibility," said Shaleen Devgun, executive vice president and CIO at Schneider. "Today, technology leadership requires building deep partnerships with leaders in centers of innovation, like Silicon Valley or wherever we identify them, to take advantage of change long before it becomes obvious to the rest of the world. Partnering with organizations like 8VC enables Schneider to marry those things that we have always uniquely done best, with technology and strategy experts that are in the business of change."

"The 8VC team spent more than a year meeting with and interviewing players at every step of the supply chain to understand the opportunities that existed to revamp the industry," said Jake Medwell, founding partner at 8VC. "Our clearest takeaway was that there is huge value to be unlocked if we could find a way to connect the enormous amounts of disparate data throughout the ecosystem to all the parties who could improve their operations if this access existed. Our investment in Platform Science with Schneider represents a culmination of our efforts to identify the best partners in fleet and technology towards that objective."

About 8VC

8VC is a San Francisco-based venture capital firm that is dedicated to solving real-world problems through industry transformation. The firm is led by a group of young, tight-knit partners with different but complementary areas of focus and expertise from their own entrepreneurial experiences. 8VC manages over $1.5 billion and its portfolio includes technology companies from high-opportunity industries, including bio-IT, finance, real estate and ecommerce. For more information, please visit http://8vc.com.

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