With cost management remaining one of the top priorities for the supply chain, VCs are looking closely at emerging technologies to find solutions

Financial data and research provider PitchBook, Inc. released its Quarter 4 Emerging Tech Research report on supply chain tech on March 24. The report discusses global emerging technologies in supply chain, and the impact of venture capital (VC) funding, deals, and exits on aspects of supply chain tech.

The Q4 report provides a macro perspective on VC activity in supply chain tech, including investment trends and market maps of VC-backed companies. It studies the supply chain tech industry in four segments–enterprise supply chain management, warehousing, freight, and last-mile delivery–in the North America and Europe markets, giving insights into the opportunities and challenges within each.

While this report focused exclusively on North America and Europe, reports for the previous two quarters collated global data. The report on 2019’s first quarter was unavailable.

Changes in the supply chain were largely spurred by growth in the ecommerce sector. In 2019, ecommerce sales in retail alone amounted to over $3 trillion^[1], and are expected to double by 2022. At $12.2 trillion, the Business-to-Business (B2B) ecommerce market valuation^[2] was six times that of the Business-to-Consumer (B2C) market in 2019, with the Asia-Pacific region staking a claim on 80% of the market share.

The report stated that the growth in both B2B and B2C ecommerce was the result of a spike in the middle-income population–who made up nearly half the world’s population in 2018^[3]–as well as the growth of the digital economy as an enabler.

PitchBook had previously found that the surge in ecommerce accelerated global business demands for quicker shipping, visibility on delivery and supply channels, as well as on-demand fulfillment of orders, making way for innovative technology companies to develop solutions for these gaps.