startups

Qualcomm Invests In Airspace Technologies For Mobile Transportation Tech


Quick Take

Qualcomm (QCOM) has made an investment in Airspace Technologies’ recent $8 million Series A funding round.

Airspace Technologies provides time-sensitive delivery and supply chain services.

QCOM is a very active and consistent strategic investor in technology companies across a wide range of industries.

Investee Company & Market

The Carlsbad, California-based Airspace Technologies was founded in 2014 to develop an integrated platform and a network of service providers to provide time-definite delivery and supply chain services, focusing on the healthcare, high-tech/semiconductor, and aerospace industries.

Management is headed by Co-Founder and CEO Nicholas Bulcao, who was previously President at Fast Delivery Systems, President at Sun Distributing and President at HEA Realty.

Company customer partners include LabCorp (LH), FedEx (FDX), and Frontier Airlines.

According to a 2017 market research report, the global airfreight forwarding market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 3.5% during the period between 2017 and 2021.

Airfreight forwarding represents 1% of global trade by volume and 35% by value of global goods distribution network.

Major competitive vendors that provide time-definite delivery services include:

  • Quick
  • Deutsche Post DHL Group (DPW.DE)
  • NGL
  • Marken
  • Kuehne + Nagel (KNIN.VX)
  • DB Schenker

Investment Terms and Rationale

Along with Qualcomm, other investors in the current round included lead investor Defy, Cross Culture Ventures, and Schematic Ventures.

The valuation wasn’t disclosed. Including the current funding, Airspace is believed to have raised at least $8 million in investment since inception, although the firm has likely raised more from an undisclosed Seed round. (Crunchbase)

Qualcomm has invested in Airspace as part of its investment into emerging Transportation and Logistics companies which take advantage of new mobility-centric technologies.

As Qualcomm Ventures’ Quinn Li stated in the deal announcement,

We are very excited about our investment in Airspace and plan to support the company as they redefine the market, using mobile technology to drive transparency and automation in the logistics space, through their best in class platform. [Italics mine]

Qualcomm has been a very active corporate investor in technology startups, investing in at least 69 company financings since the beginning of 2015.

The graphic below shows a sample of its recent investment history by various metrics:

(Source: VentureDeal Database)

The data indicate that QCOM has a broad investment scope but has invested most often in the industries of Mobile, Electronics, Digital Media, and Enterprise IT.

Most of its recent investments have been in the Series A to Series C stage of development.

By geographic location, the overwhelming majority of investee companies have been located in California, the state that QCOM is headquartered.

With such wide investment parameters, Qualcomm stands to gain a variety of benefits, from partnership opportunities to technology acquisition targets or simply inside knowledge of emerging industry developments.

Its investment in Airspace is particularly interesting due to the large size of the greater transportation industry. This aspect, combined with how much the transportation industry is affected by mobile technologies, relates directly to Qualcomm’s mobile technology initiatives.

I expect to see a continued active investment program by Qualcomm as it seeks to remain at the forefront of new technologies that can impact its business model.

Thank you for reading. I focus most of my time on IPOs. If you’re interested in investing smarter in IPOs, you should check out IPO Edge.

Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.

I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.





READ SOURCE

Leave a Reply

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you accept our use of cookies.