Plug and Play Launches $25.5M Supply Chain Fund

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By STS News Desk On Apr 20, 2022

Plug and Play’s Supply Chain Innovation Platform is excited to announce the closing of Plug and Play Supply Chain Fund I, L.P., a $25.5 million venture capital fund focusing on investments across the end-to-end supply chain. The Plug and Play Supply Chain Fund will focus on investing in Series A-C startups that are disrupting and receiving great traction in the supply chain industry.

The Plug and Play Supply Chain Fund compliments Plug and Play’s Supply Chain accelerator, which started in 2017 at Plug and Play’s global headquarters in Silicon Valley, and which expanded in 2019 into Bentonville, Arkansas with many industry-leading partners. With this fund, Plug and Play will be able to further impact its startups and help them to scale. The Plug and Play Supply Chain Fund will support the growing startup ecosystem in Northwest Arkansas and continue to bring global leaders from the supply chain venture capital ecosystem to Bentonville, Arkansas.

“Historically we’ve been successfully investing from our family office in pre-seed and seed-stage startups, but now with this new fund, we will also be able to invest in Series A, B, and C startups,” said Mike Zayonc, Founder of Plug and Play Supply Chain and Partner of Plug and Play’s Supply Chain Fund. “This is an enormous opportunity for us to invest in global startups going through our Supply Chain innovation programs currently operating in Arkansas, Silicon Valley, Hamburg, Savannah, and Toronto. Many of the best startups that go through our program are at the later growth stages as they can successfully scale to the demands of our large Fortune 500 Supply Chain partners.”

The Plug and Play Supply Chain Fund is supported by top-tier Limited Partners. The anchor Limited Partner is RZC Investments, an investment firm founded by Steuart Walton and Tom Walton, the grandsons of the founder of Walmart, Sam Walton.

“We continue to be impressed with the flywheel Plug and Play has built to identify, validate, and invest in category-defining startups across the globe. We look forward to collaborating with the Plug and Play team, alongside an impressive group of limited partners, to invest in transformational supply chain businesses both in Northwest Arkansas and internationally,” said Donald Huffner, Vice President, RZC Investments.

The Plug and Play Supply Chain Fund’s investment focus areas will follow the same lines as the program, such as warehouse automation, e-commerce logistics, last-mile delivery, sustainability in the supply chain, blockchain for supply chain, computer vision, AI, and manufacturing technology. Notable supply chain-related investments from Plug and Play include Shippo, Rappi, and Einride. Over the next two years, Plug and Play aims to make roughly 25 additional investments through this fund. Plug and Play is contributing approximately 10% of this fund’s capital, demonstrating our belief in this fund’s positive impact and future success.

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