ClearJet, an Austin-based startup developing AI-powered logistics technology, has raised $25 million in a Series B funding round led by Edison Partners, the company told Crunchbase News exclusively. The round brings the company’s total funding raised since its founding in 2022 to $40 million.
Existing investors Venture53, Origin Ventures, SaltVC, and SpringTime Ventures participated in the round. Early investors also include Sky VC, formerly known as JetBlue Ventures, and Tandem Ventures.
A Shipping Network Built on Existing Flights
ClearJet does not own a fleet of airplanes or trucks. Instead, it connects shippers with unused capacity on commercial flights already operating between U.S. cities. The company uses those flights to transport e-commerce parcels within the United States, serving customers that include multibillion-dollar major retailers, e-commerce platforms, third-party logistics companies, and online marketplaces.
Over three years, ClearJet has built a network spanning 95 U.S. airports and connecting retailers with major U.S. airlines and a number of last-mile delivery providers. Rather than passing through traditional parcel-carrier networks, shipments can move directly between cities aboard passenger aircraft that are already in the air.
The company says its model, which its founder and CEO Chris Guggenheim describes as “Uber for shipping,” can reduce shipping costs by up to 35% while cutting delivery times by one to three days. According to Guggenheim, ClearJet has become profitable, its revenue growth has exceeded threefold year over year, and its gross revenue is approaching nine figures.
How the Service Works
Retailers connect their systems to ClearJet through an API and can create a shipping label for two-day delivery. The company then handles parcel pickup, transportation to the airport, sorting, and screening before loading the parcels onto commercial flights and placing them into final-mile delivery networks upon arrival. Among the last-mile providers Guggenheim mentioned are FedEx, USPS, DoorDash, Uber, OnTrac, and Veho.
In one case, a major retailer relied on FedEx to transport goods arriving from Asia, with the journey from factory to customer taking seven days. According to Guggenheim, processing the shipments at Los Angeles International Airport, then moving them to 14 airports and handing them over to final-mile delivery companies, reduced the time to five days and generated $35 million in savings for customers.
AI and Expansion Plans
ClearJet’s AI models use factors such as cost, speed, and geographic location to select a route for each parcel within the network. The company is also developing AI agents to automate evaluation, booking, tracking, and delivery-issue resolution tasks, including rerouting parcels to another flight or city when weather-related disruptions occur.
ClearJet plans to expand into returns and international shipping, increase the number of airports in its network, and provide consumers with more detailed visibility into their parcels’ locations while in transit. The company has slightly fewer than 50 full-time employees, in addition to hundreds of contractors working seven days a week.