Tive Raises $54 Million in Funding
Logistics Tracking Company Grew Revenue by 300 Percent in 2021
Boston-based Tive has announced a $54 million Series B round of funding. The supply chain and logistics tracking company, which has raised $80 million to date, investors include Qualcomm Ventures, Fifth Wall, SJF Ventures and Floating Point Ventures.
Existing investors who participated in the round include RRE Ventures, Two Sigma Ventures, NextView Ventures, Hyperplane Ventures, Broom Ventures and Supply Chain Ventures.
In 2021, the company said it grew its revenue by more than 300 percent and acquired more than 229 new customers worldwide. The company offers multi-sensor trackers that include a 24/7 shipment monitoring service.
Other company highlights include:
Tracked and monitored shipments in more than 200 countries.
Launched a global 24/7 monitoring service.
Started the Tive Get Green Program and recycled a large percentage of the company’s trackers.
Developed a next generation of trackers that are resilient to chip shortages.
Last year, Skyhook and Tive partnered to provide hybrid location to in-transit shipments. Skyhook’s Precision Location product will replace and supplement existing location sources on specific models of Tive shipment trackers.
Rand McNally Parent Acquires Australia’s Fleetsu
Rand McNally’s parent company TELEO Capitol strengthened its connected vehicle ambitions with this week’s acquisition of Australia-based Fleetsu. The parent company will merge Fleetsu with Rand McNally’s fleet business.
The merger will allow the companies to offer platform, data, and analytics capabilities for vehicle fleets. Some of the features offered will be driver location and safety, engine performance, and vehicle efficiency (fossil and electric).
Fleetsu, founded in 2015, has won several global truck and automotive OEM contracts, including Toyota Motor Corp. in Australia. In 2021, Toyota selected Fleetsu as the platform to launch its Toyota Halo connected fleet management solution. Other Fleetsu customers include Avis, Budget, and Cummins.
Jakub Felinski, Fleetsu's founder, will become Rand McNally’s new chief innovation officer.
Aaron Dannenbring, Rand McNally CEO, was boisterous in a statement about the deal: “The combination of Rand McNally and Fleetsu creates a world-class connected vehicle powerhouse."
The acquisition also expands Rand McNally's footprint in worldwide long-haul and local fleets, field service companies, government, auto and truck OEMs (both fuel and EV platforms) and vehicle rental fleets, said Joseph Roark, TELEO Capital operating partner and Rand McNally chairman.
Geotab Partners With Utilimarc
Utilimarc has partnered with Geotab to provide the fleet industry sustainability initiatives and operational efficiencies. Minneapolis-based Utilimarc, which is already Geotab’s largest telematics provider, is expanding to provide its solutions to municipal government fleets, the company said.
The combined solution will allow fleets with access to an analytics platform that integrates Geotab's vehicle and driver data with operational system data, maintenance, charging station, and fuel cards, the company said. Through the partnership, the Geotab and Utilimarc BI solution will enable utility and government fleets to effectively navigate emissions reduction, preventative maintenance, vehicle replacement and rightsizing initiatives.
The partnership will develop products to address data quality issues from disparate and unreliable fleet management systems; supply chain issues leading to procurement challenges; sustainability and reporting demands; and pricing and costs associated with emerging technologies.
Contact: Dennis Jaconi, djaconi@utilimarc.com, www.utilimarc.com.
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🙁 Ericsson Suspends Business in Russia Indefinitely and Records Provision in Q1 2022. “In the light of recent events and of European Union sanctions, the company will now suspend its affected business with customers in Russia indefinitely.”
🚘 For Autonomous Vehicles, Safety and Trust Remain Major Obstacles. “Despite continued advancements in autonomous vehicle technology, as of March only 19 percent of U.S. adults felt they were safer in self-driving cars than in traditional vehicles, compared with 27 percent who felt similarly four years ago.”
✔ VentureIsrael Invests in Israeli Startup infiniDome. “InfiniDome is a leading developer of GPS and GNSS anti-jamming protection technology for UAVs and autonomous vehicles.”
🚙 Bosch Accelerates Software Development for Automated Driving With Acquisition of Five. “Bosch is a driving force behind the progress being made in this discipline. Now, it’s strengthening its hand by acquiring Five, Europe’s leading startup in the field of automated driving.”
🛩 Drone Swarms With 1,000 Unmanned Aircraft Could Be Possible Within 5 Years, DARPA Leader Says. “Since 2017, the agency has conducted at least six field experiments at various locations as part of its Offensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics (OFFSET) program.”
🛰 Lockheed Lays Out GPS IIIF Upgrade Roadmap. “Parts for the first batch of Lockheed Martin’s advanced GPS IIIF Follow On space vehicles (SV) are arriving at the company’s facility in Littleton, Colorado, paving the way for assembly of the initial satellite to start before 2023.”
😧 Amazon Is Still Struggling To Make Drone Deliveries Work. “A report from Bloomberg details the obstacles hampering Amazon’s efforts to get its delivery drone program off the ground, citing a high employee turnover rate and potential safety risks.”
🙁 DJI Acknowledges Continued Mavic 3 GPS Issues, States Fix To Come 'Within the Next Two Months'. “This is not the first time DJI has stated they will fix this GPS problem in a firmware patch. That’s what the Mavic 3’s 0600 firmware was supposed to fix initially. However, it is the first time DJI has made a statement on the issue since the last firmware was released, and users have begun to complain GPS acquisition is still extremely slow on a cold start.”
😮 Driverless Car Appears To Flee the Scene After Being Pulled Over by Cops. “A .video showing a driverless car being stopped by the police and then attempting to drive away went viral over the weekend. San Francisco police stopped one of Cruise's autonomous Chevrolet Bolt EVs, likely because the car's headlights were not on despite it being night. In the video, first posted to Instagram on April 2, an officer can be heard saying, ‘There's nobody in it.’"
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Trimble Sells Four Companies
Trimble [TRMB] has announced it will sell its Time and Frequency, LOADRITE, Spectra Precision Tools and SECO accessories businesses to Precisional LLC, an affiliate of The Jordan Company. The sale is part of Trimble’s strategy to focus on areas core to its long-term growth and strategic product roadmap, the company said. Financial details were not disclosed, but the deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2022. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Contact: Trimble, www.trimble.com.
Ituran Selects HPE Cloud Native Storage
Hewlett Packard Enterprise [HPE] has announced that Ituran, a global vehicle monitoring and telemetry company headquartered in Israel, has selected HPE Alletra cloud-native data infrastructure to host all vehicle telemetry data for its business in Brazil. The new data services solution enables Ituran to provide its clients with real-time access to vehicle data, to improve automation, decision-making, and business operations, the company said. Ituran services use in-vehicle telematics to track driving behavior and vehicle location.
Contact: Clare Loxley, clare.loxley@hpe.com, www.hpe.com.
Septentrio Brings OSNMA Anti-spoofing Security to Market
Septentrio has announced the release of Open Service Navigation Message Authentication functionality on their mosaic GNSS receiver modules. OSNMA offers authentication on Galileo’s civilian signals, protecting receivers from GNSS spoofing attacks, the company said.
Septentrio has been working with the European Space Agency during the test phases of OSNMA deployment, the company said. The anti-spoofing capability of OSNMA complements Septentrio’s Advanced Interference Mitigation technology, AIM+, the company said.
Contact: Septentrio, septentrio.com.
Descartes Labs To Present Autonomous Sensing Technology at GEOINT
Descartes Labs will present in the GEOINT Tradecraft Competition April 26 and host a two-part training workshop at GEOINT 2022 in Colorado. The sessions instruct attendees how to apply machine learning (ML)-based analytics and multimodal ALL-INT data fusion techniques on a cloud platform for autonomous detection and visualization of targets, the company said.
Contact: Alex Diamond, Descartes Labs, (303) 877-2721, Alex.diamond@descarteslabs.com, www.descarteslabs.com.
TCarta Marine Presents SDB Data Sets at GEOINT 2022
TCarta Marine will present its satellite-derived bathymetric (SDB) data sets on Terradepth’s Absolute Ocean visualization platform at GEOINT 2022. Additional in-booth presentations will feature the latest SDB techniques for extracting water depth measurements from MAXAR, Sentinel, Satellogic, and other satellite image data. TCarta will be demonstrating how NASA ICESat-2 LiDAR data sets can be visualized and manipulated for validation of SDB products.
Contact: TCarta Marine, (303) 284-6144, info@tcarta.com, www.tcarta.com.
Cognosos Offers Hospital Asset Tracking
Cognosos has announced the availability of ProPAR, Proactive Periodic Automated Replenishment. ProPAR leverages Cognosos’ indoor location engine, LocationAI, to provide room-level visibility to asset location for hospitals.
Other features include restock picklists that assist users to manage the inventory efficiently, at-a-glance asset status notifying teams of which assets are ready for use, or unavailable because they need cleaning or maintenance.
Contact: Cognosos, http://www.cognosos.com/hospitals.
Nearmap Partners With UP42
Nearmap’s aerial imagery of major urban areas in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand will soon be available through UP42, the company said. The initial offering will include the Nearmap vertical imagery, which is updated multiple times each year at 5.5- to 7.5-centimeter spatial resolution for more over 1740 urban areas in the US and over 100 in Australia. Vertical imagery from Nearmap provides an orthogonal imagery base layer that offers consistent clarity, precision, and spatial detail for cities and their surrounding areas.
Contact: Taylor Cenicola, taylor.cenicola@nearmap.com.
3Dtracking Partners With TOPFLYtech
3Dtracking has announced that the company has recently integrated two solar-powered asset tracking devices from TOPFLYtech, a manufacturer of GNSS hardware. TOPFLYtech’s TLP1-SF and TLP2-SFB products are location tracking devices for monitoring the location of trailers, containers and other non-powered fleet assets.
TLP1-SF and TLP2-SFB are solar-powered devices and include a long life, rechargeable battery that can remain powered for up to 320 days without solar charging, the company said. All location tracking and alert information are transferred to the 3Dtracking platform from these two TOPFLYtech devices in real-time over a 2G or 4G LTE-M cellular network, the company said.
Contact: 3Dtracking, www.3dtracking.com.
TrakAssure Integrates Cargo Tracking Into KVH Agile Plans Service
TrakAssure is integrating its cargo tracking technology into KVH AgilePlans Connectivity Service and standard VSAT systems. KVH VSAT equipment is installed on thousands of vessels worldwide and provides real-time data for operations and enables IoT use on these vessels, the company said. With KVH VSAT connectivity, TrakAssure can connect the cargo throughout the deep-sea portion of the transportation journey to enable end-to-end supply chain tracking and condition-monitoring solution, the company said.
Contact: TrakAssure, https://trakassure.com.
GeoComm Achieves Designation From ESRI
GeoComm has achieved ArcGIS Indoors Specialty designation from Esri that recognizes the company’s indoor mapping and location analytics capabilities. GeoComm Indoor Maps offer visual representation of indoor spaces to telecommunicators and first responders, the company said.
Contact: Susan Becker, GeoComm, (320) 240-0040, www.geocomm.com.
iPosi and VT-ARC Grab DoD Contract
GPS/GNSS technology firm iPosi and Virginia Tech Applied Research Corporation (VT-ARC) have been contracted by the Department of Defense's Defense Spectrum Office (DSO) to develop a GPS/GNSS system to measure radio frequency (RF) path-loss. IPosi's in-building SMART 5G measures the loss profile to protect military and commercial spectrum from interference in shared or adjacent bands, the company said.
The agreement represents a collaboration among multiple academic and industry partners, one of several endeavors by the Defense Information Systems Agency and Defense Spectrum Organization under the Spectrum Sharing Test & Evaluation (SSTD) project as part of the DoD Advanced Wireless Systems–3 (AWS-3) spectrum transition program.
Contact: Contact: R. Lee, iPosi, rlee@iposi.com, iposi.com.
MiX Telematics Partners With CANGO
MiX Telematics has partnered with CANGO Mobility, which provides modular and scalable connected fleet SaaS solutions to customers in more than 120 countries. CANGO’s comprehensive rich vehicle data CANBUS Library augments the MiX solution by unlocking fleet vehicles’ raw data sets, the company said.
Contact: MiX Telematics, (855) 564-9835. ir@mixtelematics.com.
People
TomTom [TOM2] has announced that Marili ‘t Hooft-Bolle has been nominated for appointment to the TomTom Supervisory Board for a term of four years. Hooft-Bolle is the Chief Operational Officer at InSided. TomTom Supervisory Board members Jacqueline Tammenoms-Bakker and Hala Zeine will step down after the Annual General Meeting
Sheeva.AI has named Lokesh Kumar as its new Chief Technology Officer. Kumar comes to Sheeva.AI from Urgently, where he was a co-founder and the Chief Architect.
Octo Telematics has appointed Michael Ferreira as Chief Commercial Officer (CCO). Ferreira was previously Senior Vice President, Global Sales & Marketing, for US-based fleet management company Donlen.
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