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Smedvig Capital stumps up $12m for Xeneta

Xeneta, an ocean freight benchmarking and market intelligence software platform, has raised $12m in a Series B investment round led by London-based Smedvig Capital. Existing investors including Creandum and Alliance Venture also participated in the round. The financing will be used to fund Xeneta’s continued global expansion and to strengthen its product development and technology platform. Rob Toms, a managing director at Smedvig, will form a part of Xeneta’s board of directors. Smedvig will join Xeneta’s earlier investors Creandum, Point Nine Capital, Alliance Venture and Alden, bringing the total raised by Xeneta since 2012 to $20.5m.

“We were looking for a VC who shared our strategic long-term outlook. Shipping is not a fast-paced industry and Smedvig’s extended investment perspective plays very well with our strategy making them an ideal investment partner,” said Patrik Berglund, CEO & co-founder at Xeneta.

“One thing that was particularly appealing about Smedvig was that their founding roots stem from the shipping industry. That coupled with their experience in scaling enterprise technology businesses in traditional industries globally made it a perfect fit for us,” said Thomas Sørbø, the other co-founder at Xeneta.

Smedvig Capital was founded in 1996 by Johnny Hewett and Peter Smedvig, the latter of whom hails from Stavenger in Norway and is well known for the eponymous oilfield services business he also used to run.

“We are excited to be backing and working with Patrik, Thomas and their team to continue their impressive growth. The business has already had a major impact in the $200bn+ container shipping market, and we are confident that Xeneta will continue to drive change in the ocean freight and related markets,” said Toms.

Founded in 2012 in Oslo, Xeneta claims it is now the largest ocean freight rate benchmarking and market intelligence platform in the world.

An original investor in the platform lavished praise on the start-up in a release today.

“Xeneta is one of my favorite Creandum seed deals because from the very first meeting you could see such a massive potential in the team and in the opportunity to bring price transparency to global freight. Xeneta has developed phenomenally and we’re very happy to welcome Smedvig Capital as co-investors, as we share the founders’ long-term vision for the company,” said Fredrik Cassel, partner at Creandum.

Sam Chambers

Starting out with the Informa Group in 2000 in Hong Kong, Sam Chambers became editor of Maritime Asia magazine as well as East Asia Editor for the world’s oldest newspaper, Lloyd’s List. In 2005 he pursued a freelance career and wrote for a variety of titles including taking on the role of Asia Editor at Seatrade magazine and China correspondent for Supply Chain Asia. His work has also appeared in The Economist, The New York Times, The Sunday Times and The International Herald Tribune.
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