Flexport, Inc.
Explore Flexport
Core profile pages, annual revenue records, and related research hubs for this company.
Flexport, Inc.
Explore Flexport
Core profile pages, annual revenue records, and related research hubs for this company.
Company History
Founded 2013 in San Francisco, California
Flexport was founded in San Francisco in 2013 after Ryan Petersen saw, through ImportGenius and cross-border trade data, how much of global logistics still depended on disconnected brokers, spreadsheets, PDFs, emails, and opaque handoffs. The company's early idea was not to be a pure marketplace, but to become a licensed freight forwarder with software at the operating core. That decision mattered: Flexport had to learn the physical, regulated work of ocean freight, air freight, customs brokerage, and carrier coordination while building a customer-facing platform for visibility and workflow automation. The modern company is still shaped by that hybrid identity. It is a logistics operator that wants the repeatability and data leverage of software, and its current strategy is to use customs data, AI-assisted tariff work, and shipment visibility to make forwarding relationships stickier.
Ryan Petersen founded Flexport in 2013 and returned as CEO in 2023. His current leadership focus is profitability, customer service, customs and tariff automation, and a more disciplined version of Flexport's original software-enabled forwarding model.
David Habben is part of Flexport's founding story, alongside Ryan Petersen, as the company moved from trade-data insight toward licensed freight-forwarding operations.
Ryan Petersen founded Flexport in San Francisco to digitize freight forwarding, customs, and cross-border shipment visibility.
Flexport became one of the best-known venture-backed freight forwarders as shippers looked for software-driven visibility.
Flexport raised capital at an $8 billion valuation during the supply-chain crisis and freight-rate boom.
Ryan Petersen returned as CEO as the freight market weakened and Flexport reset its cost base and priorities.
Credible reporting put 2024 revenue around $2.1 billion, signaling a smaller and more disciplined post-boom operating base.
Flexport continued positioning around AI-supported logistics, tariff recovery, customs workflows, and profitable international expansion.
To add fulfillment and logistics capabilities for commerce merchants.
To add trucking technology and shipper-carrier workflow capabilities after Convoy shut down.
Flexport, Inc. was founded in 2013.
Flexport's defining turns came when its core model had to adapt to new technology, market structure, and customer economics.
Flexport grew by expanding its core Digital freight forwarding and supply-chain technology model, adding adjacent products, and building operating scale.