Cartwheel, Waabi Raise Fresh Funds
Uber Eats + Save A Lot, Instacart + Sally Beauty, 3PD market share mystery
We hope you all are having a lovely Juneteenth! We’re keeping today’s edition short and sweet, so you can spend your time off contemplating the ways this country can try to make good on the ideals promulgated by the Reconstruction Amendments.
Today:
Cartwheel Closes On $1.5M Seed Plus
Waabi Aims for 2025 AV Trucking Launch
Chart Time | A Second Measure Market Share Mystery
Uber Eats + Save A Lot, Instacart + Sally Beauty
FINANCE | Cartwheel Raises $1.5M Seed Plus
Los Angeles-based hybrid delivery platform Cartwheel recently closed on an oversubscribed “seed plus” round, taking on new board members and advisors on the process. Now, Modern Delivery has exclusively learned the amount of capital raised: $1.5 million. “We are thrilled with the support and confidence our existing and new investors have shown in Cartwheel. In the current market, investors are increasingly focused on startups with a healthy path to profitability, and we’re proud to be on that journey. Our team's ability to grow revenue threefold year-over-year while maintaining a lean operation highlights our commitment to efficiency and innovation. This funding will help us continue enhancing our platform and expanding our reach” shared CEO & Co-Founder Alex Vasilkin, who recently relocated to Colorado Springs.
The Big Picture: Cartwheel, which professes confidence it’ll reach profitability by next year, helps brands like Portillo’s, P.F. Changs and Potbelly route some orders to in-house couriers, while shunting others to 3PD white label dispatch services like Uber Direct and DoorDash Drive. This round’s funders include Chingona Ventures, Act One Ventures, TenOneTen Ventures, Moonshots Capital, Eudemian Ventures, Synetro Group, Innovent Capital Group and MinervaVerse. Cartwheel took an interesting approach to sharing the news: instead of doing the traditional media outreach route, they instead had their many investors and board members share the big update via their own channels and on LinkedIn.
AUTONOMY | Freshly Capitalized, Waabi Targets 2025 Deployment
Driverless truck tech startup Waabi just hauled in a fresh $200 million in Series B funding, led by Uber and Khosla Ventures, with participation from NVIDIA, Volvo Group Venture Capital, Porsche Automobil Holding SE, Scania Invest and IKEA’s Ingka Investments and more. Waabi has been testing its Level 4 tech both on Texas’ roads, and through countless computer simulations (the press release throws in the buzzword “generative AI” a few too many times…) and now plans to launch fully driverless autonomous trucks in 2025.
The Big Picture: The North American AV space (Waabi is based in Toronto) seems to have recovered quickly from last fall’s nadir. Gatik, which is more focused on the middle-mile, also just announced an investment from and strategic alliance with Japanese conglomerate Itochu. While the whole industry can now turn to publicly available research to understand what went wrong with Cruise’s SF incident, that’s not always the case in other countries. In China, for example, the government consistently censors any media coverage of problems with its own burgeoning AV industry.
CHART TIME | What’s Wrong With This Picture?
Today, let’s take a close look at the fact that we don’t have a chart up top. After consistently publishing 3PD market share updates in the middle of each month, Bloomberg Second Measure seems to have gone silent. Our outreaches to Michal Kaczmarski, whose byline graces the data, have gone unanswered. Anyone out there have a tip on what’s gone wrong?
3PD | Uber Eats + Save A Lot, Instacart + Sally Beauty
Uber Eats announced a new partnership with discount grocer Save A Lot, kicking off with 150 stores and eventually expanding to 600+ locations in 32 states. Not to be outdone, Instacart has a new partner of its own: makeup and hair care retailer Sally Beauty. IC will offer 7K SKUs from over 2,200 nationwide Sally Beauty locations.
The Big Picture: Save A Lot is a decidedly low-end grocer, the Greater St. Louis-based brand recently sold off its holdings and switched to a licensee model to keep its own costs down. With that customer base in mind, Uber is playing up that Save A Lot customers will be able to pay for their deliveries via a Health Benefits card, a pre-funded debit card that’s a part of some healthcare plans. For its part, Instacart aims to stay one step ahead as competitors muscle in on its grocery turf. Sally joins other beauty brands on the platform like Kiehl’s and Sephora.
A Few Good Links
Uber partners with T-Mobile Ad Solutions (formerly Octopus Interactive) for JourneyTV. Shift4 buys stake in Vectron. Ola Electric nears $660M IPO. Fisker bankrupt. Mexican web grocer Jüsto wins Merco best company award. New laws unlikely to fix reservation scalping. Starbucks partners with Marriott Bonvoy. New Pizza Hut toppings. Subway adds snacks. Little Caesars adds tech execs. Tapas chain Boqueria recommends keeping your tech stack lean. Panera running low on dough? Not so hot: Hooters debuts frozen food. Verity scores customer for in-warehouse drones. CVS launches self-serve ad platform. BNSF owes Swinomish tribe $394.5M for violating agreement. Deliveroo Plus Diamond. Addmotor launches UL-certified cargo ebike. DoorDash and Aldi team up for meaty discounts. Geekplus warehouse bots power largest automated facility in Taiwan. Domino’s Q2 earnings webcast set for 7/18. AIR debuts cargo EVTOL. Quality control issues roil Indian q-commerce. Zepto nears new funding at $3.6B valuation.
Got a tip, feedback, or just want to say hi? Reply back to this email.