UPS Unveils Equity Investment and Partnership With Blockchain B2B Firm Inxeption
The investment arm of logistics giant UPS has made an undisclosed equity investment in United States enterprise blockchain company Inxeption, the firm confirmed in a press release Jan 16.
Inxeption, which began operations in 2017, aims to use blockchain technology to improve various processes for businesses, including product design, manufacturing and supply chain management.
Neither party has revealed the scope of the deal, which will reportedly see Inxeption and the UPS Strategic Enterprise Fund work in tandem in future to develop new features for Inxeption’s platform.
“Business customers need secure platforms that protect their customer data and proprietary information, while making it easy for them to interact and even collaborate more effectively with their customers,” Inxeption CEO and co-founder Farzad Dibachi commented in the press release.
Describing its product as an e-commerce platform for the B2B market, Inxeption joins a steadily increasing pool of blockchain initiatives focused on using distributed technology to make complex corporate systems more transparent.
UPS CMO Kevin Warren stated in the press release that “Inxeption’s technology is attractive to UPS because it helps unlock new efficiencies for customers using B2B e-commerce platforms.”
Supply chains have proved a particular area of interest amongst firms developing blockchain solutions in 2019. Several blockchain-based supply chain projects have been announced in the past week alone, as diverse as cobalt supplies and food for the upcoming World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos.
The Inxeption partnership reveals UPS’ belief in blockchain’s potential, despite cautionary words from a senior executive last month that forecast little impact from the technology in 2019.
“We have a small team looking at blockchain, but we are still searching for the killer use case,” the company’s executive vice president of technology and chief digital officer Linda Jojo told mainstream media in December.