Logistics Startup Failures

SoftBank's digital freight unicorn became a restructuring case when ocean rates crashed.

Driverless trucks on fixed routes couldn't fix the problem of Walmart walking away and regulators stalling.

Maersk's freight bet shrank from 800 to 200 employees as the market refused to recover.

Google and Reliance's quick commerce bet that couldn't crack delivery unit economics in nine years

Digitizing trade documents for an industry that still loves paper.

Walmart's delivery OS partner could not survive geopolitical risk and endless enterprise sales cycles.

A $1.3B warehouse unicorn discovered that owning physical assets kills software-company multiples.

The $11.8B quick commerce titan that conquered Gorillas and Blok — then exited every European market in months.

European supply chain visibility leader raised €120M and ended up absorbed by the American rival it was fighting.

The Indian B2B agritech unicorn backed by Tiger Global and Walmart reached $1.6B then couldn't fix fresh produce margins

3D warehouse robots were too complex, too expensive, and too slow to save a startup burning $3M monthly.

The Airbnb of warehousing ran out of runway when inventory cycles turned.

Built for Germany's supply chain law — but German SMEs chose Excel over SaaS.

Built on a tax loophole — one policy change erased the entire business model.

Gig delivery math never worked — $170M couldn't fix the unit economics.

Korea's B2B delivery giant collapsed when driver costs exploded and Series D investors vanished.

Y Combinator-backed autonomous trucking startup SPAC'd at $5.2B. Filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy 15 months later. Sold assets for $70M.

Post-pandemic parcel volumes killed the last-mile visibility dream.

The warehousing SaaS startup crushed when logistics giants bundled fulfillment as a loss leader.

The Red Sea crisis proved PortWatch right — six weeks after they ran out of money.

Subsidizing drivers to compete with Lalamove burned through $120M with no viable exit.

Medical drone pioneer that crashed before reaching scale.

Indonesia's logistics aggregator was squeezed to death between giant competitors and rising fuel costs.

Rode the freight boom; drowned in the freight bust.

Digital freight margins went to zero — and so did Transfix.

AI fuel savings for ships—great ROI pitch, fatal renewal rate problem.

SoftBank bet $700M on parking garages as logistics hubs. It did not go well.

Romania's fulfillment network collapsed when one customer leaving wiped out a third of all volume.

A billion-dollar last-mile merger that lost packages and then lost everything.

The $8B freight unicorn that went through two CEOs in a year and laid off 30% while SoftBank watched

Guatemalan last-mile logistics leader dismantled by Rappi's 70% price subsidies in 18 months.

Hotel delivery robot pioneer outlasted the hype but not the competition.

Walmart drone delivery partner that couldn't crack the unit economics.

AI cameras in warehouses couldn't see a path to profitability.

Colombian urban freight platform that burned $28M before the VC funding winter forced insolvency.

Chilean grocery delivery pioneer agreed to sell to Walmart in 2018, was blocked, then sold to Uber in 2021—only to see the brand retired as Uber absorbed it into Uber Eats.

Mexico's e-commerce logistics platform raised $35M to connect online sellers with last-mile carriers — and collapsed in 2023 when the freight broker model could not cover its cost of operations.

Lima-born last-mile delivery startup raised $5.5M to dominate LatAm e-commerce logistics—then shut down operations country by country as unit economics never closed.

Bought for $450M, sold for $13M: Shopify's warehouse robot became the most expensive pivot in logistics history.

The digital freight brokerage that raised $930M to disrupt trucking — shut down when the post-COVID freight market collapsed overnight

Blockchain supply chain predictive finance that was too complex to implement and too crypto to fund.

The tech-enabled Mexico-USA freight platform that nearshoring hype couldn't save

$125M B2B commerce giant Wasoko imploded when its MaxAB merger fell apart.

Brazil's digital freight brokerage platform IPO'd at R$8B and crashed as truck freight volumes normalized

Indian logistics unicorn discovered that US enterprise sales kill SaaS startups as surely as bad products.

Australia's shipping software star shed 30% of staff when post-COVID e-commerce volumes crashed.

Blockchain couldn't float a ship that nobody wanted to board.

Colombia's last-mile delivery pioneer absorbed by a larger logistics group after Rappi and iFood overwhelmed its position

AI freight document processing swallowed by the very platform it competed with.

Outgunned by Shiprocket and drowning in COD returns, Pickrr had no way out.

Cold chain IoT startup burned out when Brexit and COVID tripled its hardware costs.

Colombia's e-commerce fulfillment startup raised $35M to become the LatAm Flexport — and shut down in under two years when the capital never arrived to close its unit-economics gap.

Saudi last-mile delivery startup crushed between legacy giants going digital and VC-backed disruptors.

Six years of supply chain visibility software that no one could see a reason to buy.

French warehouse robot pioneer outspent and absorbed by Swiss material handling giant.

Built to deliver in Ukraine — destroyed before it could scale.

Munich picking robot startup absorbed by investor-turned-acquirer Körber after missing speed targets.

Colombia's 33-year-old logistics giant that couldn't pivot fast enough for the e-commerce era.

Logistics demand forecasting wiped out by a merger it had no data model to predict.

Ex-Deliveroo execs raised $40M for quick commerce. Sold to Gopuff within a year. Gopuff then also collapsed.

The shipping industry's most ambitious blockchain project died of competitive distrust.

Sustainable cold chain packaging couldn't sustain itself when raw material costs inflated 60%.

First FAA-approved drone delivery company that ran out of runway.

GoGoVan's logistics platform, rebranded Lalamove, that retreated from 300+ cities after China regulatory pressure.

Russian-backed quick commerce that burned through $165M to prove European grocery delivery in 15 minutes doesn't work.

AI-powered apparel sorting robot absorbed into Ocado's empire, losing its identity.

Promising warehouse robot maker absorbed into enterprise giant at below-unicorn price.

Crowdsourced delivery startup swallowed whole by the incumbent it was meant to disrupt.

Brazilian crowdshipping startup that built a last-mile network of neighbourhood pickup points — could not make the unit economics close at the density required to sustain operations.

Sears' bankruptcy and Amazon's logistics arm crushed the micro-fulfillment pioneer.

Brazilian convenience delivery app acquired by Burger King Brazil for $7M in 2020 — and shut down in 2021 when the parent company refocused on its core restaurant business.

Chile's grocery delivery pioneer, absorbed by Uber and stripped of independence.

China's freight unicorn grounded by cybersecurity regulators the same week as its IPO.

Government drone contract killed by election cycle and exclusivity disputes.

Mexico City's 30-minute delivery promise that cost more per order than it earned.

The crowdsourced same-day delivery network for retailers that shut down as COVID shifted e-commerce to Amazon-scale logistics.

Singapore grocery and food delivery raised $200M and expanded to 8 Asian markets. Then ran out of cash, stopped paying employees, and quietly collapsed.

Peruvian urban delivery startup that pioneered same-day courier services in Lima — outcompeted and shut down as Rappi and Glovo entered Peru with hundreds of millions in global capital.

The GPS-based delivery startup backed by FedEx that solved the Middle East's no-address problem — then ran out of capital

A corporate spinoff killed by its own parent's acquisition before it could prove itself.

Campus food delivery robot startup starved of funding in a Starship-dominated market.

Undercutting Canada Post on price is a race to the bottom nobody wins.

Tracking containers when the real prize was tracking data supremacy.

On-demand cold chain delivery: great idea, terrible unit economics.

San Francisco's sidewalk robot dream crushed by city hall and cold unit economics.

Urban curbside pickup startup made obsolete when Walmart built the same tech in-house.

Arizona delivery robot startup quietly folded after pilot-stage economics proved unworkable.

Helping freight forwarders go digital—until digital giants made them irrelevant.

Sidewalk robot startup absorbed by Nuro before reaching commercial scale.

Mahindra's own B2B logistics bet that couldn't compete even with a corporate giant's backing.

Instant dynamic shipping quotes powered by advanced algorithms to disrupt freight forwarding.

Fleet maintenance on-demand hit the wall of sparse geography and unprofitable service density.

David Chang's restaurant-quality food delivery startup never found a price that worked for everyone

Real-time ocean tracking sounded great—until carriers refused to cooperate.

Scheduling every package delivery to your apartment — a great idea at $3.1 million, untenable at scale

Ten-dollar restaurant food in 10 minutes required kitchen density that could never pencil out

A $675M acquisition that swallowed a logistics pioneer whole.

The original Instacart — delivered anything in an hour, lost money on every delivery, ran out of dot-com cash in 2001

Gorillas. Getir. Gopuff. All did exactly what Urbanfetch did in 1999 — and most of them failed too.

Pan-African freight marketplace ran into the realities of African trucking

Egyptian freight marketplace that raised 42 million dollars to digitize trucking in the Middle East before Egypt economic crisis and currency devaluation killed the model.

European digital freight forwarder that raised $640M and was devastated by the 2023 European logistics recession.

Airmee raised €30M to make same-day delivery standard in Swedish e-commerce — then sold at distress to PostNord as the unit economics of same-day delivery proved impossible to crack

The Indian B2B distribution unicorn that raised 330 million dollars and then cut a third of its workforce

Colombian last-mile logistics startup burned through capital before reaching unit economics positive

The German quick commerce startup that raised 750 million dollars in 18 months and sold to a supermarket chain

Argentine fleet management SaaS destroyed by peso devaluation and global GPS incumbents

Indonesian digital freight marketplace squeezed between Gojek and Grab logistics arms

Fashion supply chain SaaS from Porto that ran out of runway after COVID disrupted its core market and froze client contracts.

The Swedish parcel delivery unicorn that merged with Budbee and then filed for bankruptcy together

West Africa digital freight platform backed by TLcom and Frontier Car Group that raised $30M to digitize informal trucking before unit economics and naira devaluation forced it to scale back.

Burkina Faso's last-mile delivery startup collapsed under the weight of the Sahel security crisis

OnTruck raised EUR 72M from Index Ventures and Partech to digitize Spanish trucking — and sold to a state-owned postal subsidiary for a fraction of that in 2021 after failing to crack the fragmented freight market.

Panama Canal corridor logistics startup acquired for parts after capital ran dry

Digitizing the Horn of Africa's most strategic port

Bolivian last-mile logistics platform that couldn't build density fast enough to reach viability

Outrider raised 110 million dollars from UPS Ventures and CEVA Logistics to automate distribution yard trucking — and shut down in September 2023 after the autonomous vehicle funding winter hit and its technology was not yet ready for commercial deployment.

Panama logistics tech for a Canal corridor where Hutchison Ports, Navis, and IBM had already locked all port infrastructure contracts

The relay trucking unicorn that reinvented Indian freight and then sold its core to Flipkart

The UK same-day delivery pioneer acquired by eBay and quietly shut down after three years

Ecom Express IPO-ed on the NSE in February 2024 — and announced it was shutting down entirely just two months later, leaving 4,600 employees without jobs as Meesho, Amazon, and Delhivery destroyed its last-mile economics.

Goldman-backed Nigerian trucking marketplace raised $30M to be the Uber Freight of Africa — then collapsed under the weight of the continent it tried to connect

Malta's freight-tech startup hit the hard ceiling of a 500,000-person island market

Southeast Asia cross-border parcel platform abruptly shut leaving merchants stranded

Last-mile tuk-tuk delivery network across Egyptian cities

Mexico logistics second wave competing against Mercado Libre Envíos (60%+ e-commerce), 99minutos, and Amazon Logistics in the same Mexico City market

The micro-fulfillment robotics startup that automated grocery warehouses before running out of cash

Spanish sustainable last-mile delivery startup backed by UPS and Tiger Global that raised 180 million euros and entered zombie mode as unit economics failed to converge.

The logistics startup that couldn't crack Panama's oligopoly of global freight giants

The ex-Amazon executives built a B2B parcel delivery network to challenge UPS and FedEx and shut down after 2 years when volume never reached break-even density.

London B2B warehousing marketplace raised 3.5 million pounds to match businesses with spare warehouse capacity and shut down when the supply side never materialized at scale.

Mexico's last-mile startup that scaled for a world that stopped ordering

Dutch peer-to-peer large item transport marketplace that raised 8M euros to match drivers with furniture movers before going bankrupt in 2023.

Nigerian trucking marketplace retreated as naira collapse made operations unviable

Dominican Republic's on-demand delivery app couldn't survive iFood and Rappi's market entry

Wolt exited Croatia and Slovenia as delivery economics proved unsustainable in small Balkan markets

Hong Kong logistics app crushed by its own merger partner

Nigerian same-day delivery startup crushed between fuel costs and Bolt/Uber competition

East Africa B2B FMCG distribution startup that raised $35M from Tiger Global before collapsing under the weight of perishable logistics and informal trader credit risk.

Polish warehouse robotics startup that built AI-powered pick-and-place arms to automate e-commerce fulfillment centers

Laos's first logistics SaaS found that digitising informal trade routes required more than software

Vietnamese last-mile startup crushed between Grab and Gojek

Last-mile delivery platform that exited Thailand under Line Man Wongnai and Kerry Express pressure.

Mexico trucking marketplace that discovered negative unit economics too late

Pakistan B2B grocery delivery startup backed by Tiger Global that raised $22M and shut down within two years as the kirana store credit model collapsed.

South African click-and-collect network ran out of growth as courier giants undercut

InstaFreight raised 25 million euros to digitize European road freight brokerage — and sold to its strategic investor DB Schenker for roughly 13 million euros in 2021, after Transporeon and traditional brokers blocked the market digitization thesis.