- Swap raises $40 million in Series B funding led by ICONIQ Growth.
- Founded in 2022, Swap consolidates logistics for e-commerce brands into one platform.
- Swap uses AI for inventory management and plans international expansion with new funding.
Swap, an e-commerce operating startup, has raised $40 million in Series B funding led by ICONIQ Growth. QED Investors, Cherry Ventures, Portfolio Ventures, and 9900 Capital also participated in the round.
Founded in 2022 by Sam Atkinson and Zach Bailet, Swap provides a platform for direct-to-consumer, e-commerce brands to manage their logistics in one place. Brands typically rely on multiple providers for various parts of their business, like cross-border shipping, order tracking, return management, and inventory forecasting, Swap cofounder Sam Atkinson told BI. Swap brings all of these functions together into a single system, reducing the need for multiple service providers.
“The advantage there is that we get to consolidate a lot of the data that you get from these different products and different consumer interactions,” Atkinson said. “We’re supporting brands through the whole lifecycle — from when a product is going to be bought by the brand to when it is sold to the customer to when it’s returned.”
Swap is also integrating artificial intelligence into its platform to enhance its inventory management and operational processes. The company’s newest product, Swap Inventory, will use AI to help clients forecast trends and demand by analyzing data from brands’ warehouses, Shopify stores, and return data from its own platform. The company also uses AI to help with cross-border tax filing and return processing. Swap is using “a lot of different foundation models” for its AI products, including Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT, Atkinson said.
Swap’s “sweet spot” customers are brands generating between $5 million and $100 million in revenue, Atkinson said. With the new funding, the company aims to expand to serve larger customers gradually. Swap’s current clients include fashion labels Nadine Merabi, Motel Rocks, and The Frankie Shop.
Before cofounding Swap, Atkinson worked as a corporate lawyer and at business banking startup Juni. Atkinson met cofounder Zach Bailet at business school and started another e-commerce company with him before cofounding Swap. Bailet previously worked at Deloitte and Tefron, a textile manufacturing company.
The new funding will support the 120-person company's "biggest opportunity," helping brands sell internationally, Atkinson said. The platform assists with international sales by calculating duties and taxes at checkout, allowing customers to prepay these costs and avoid unexpected fees after delivery. Swap also uses AI to help brands determine international pricing strategies and partners with FedEx to manage international shipping for brands.
The new capital will also help Swap expand into international markets such as Australia, Europe, Canada, and the US. The startup is using the funding to build out its sales team and open a fourth office in New York this year. Swap already has offices in London, Tel Aviv, and the Netherlands.
The startup rivals a range of companies in the e-commerce logistics space. Its cross-border product competes with Global-E, a public company that also provides tools, like duties and tax calculations, that help brands sell their products internationally. Swap's inventory management software goes up against companies such as Syrup and Autone, which both also offer AI-based forecasting for merchandising teams.
"Even small merchants have to cobble together a handful of tools in order to solve all their operational challenges end to end," Seth Pierrepont, a general partner at ICONIQ Growth based in London, said. "Swap took a very different view to that. They're like, 'we're going to solve it all in one single platform.'"