By Stephen Nellis
(Reuters) - Airspace Technologies, a U.S. logistics startup that specializes in transporting time-sensitive cargo, on Thursday said it is expanding operations in Asia and working with Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) and other semiconductor firms.
Airspace, which was founded in 2016 and raised $100 million in funding, uses a combination of sensors placed on packages and a cloud-based software system to show where packages are in real time as they are picked up by contract drivers, put on planes and then picked up again for delivery. It specializes in high-value shipments where minutes matter, such as human organs bound for transplant surgeries.
On Thursday, the company, which operates in Europe and the U.S., said it was expanding to Malaysia, Vietnam and Singapore and increasing its work with the chip industry. During the manufacturing process, semiconductors typically cross oceans several times before they are ready to be put into devices such as computers or smartphones.
Because chips are small and light compared to their value, that shuttling has taken the form of air cargo. But the global air cargo industry is being upended by fast-fashion clothing brands snapping up capacity that has been limited since the pandemic.
That's an issue for the chip industry, where multi-billion-dollar factories are only profitable when running at full capacity around the clock and stoppages to wait for packages cost money. Alex Coates, Airspace's president and chief financial officer, said chip companies are now asking logistics partners for a range of options - including paying extra to make sure that materials arrive on time.
"They're looking for people to be much more consultative than they were 10 years ago. You need to help them figure out these complex problems," Coates said in an interview.
Qualcomm's subsidiary RF360 Europe, which manufactures radio frequency chips, has been using Airspace's service to track shipments from Asia to Europe and vice versa. In a statement, Michael Fleischmann, a senior director of sourcing for the unit, said the ability to track packages in real time was "a critical aspect in our industry that requires the highest discipline in on-time-deliveries."