Route Package Tracker Raises $12M For AI Enhancements

Package tracking platform Route raised $12 million in seed funding that includes $500,000 from a January pre-seed round, TechCrunch reported on Thursday (Nov. 21).

The pre-seed funding was from Peak Venture Capital, which also led the new seed round, along with Album VC  and strategic partner Pattern.

Using the Route App, users can visually track and protect online orders as well as resolve issues. Route+ offers retailers an end-to-end post-purchase experience.

The startup has offices in Silicon Slopes, Utah and Santa Monica, California and was co-founded in 2014 by Evan Walker, who serves as the company’s chief executive officer. The firm has already grown to $8.85 million in revenue and 100 employees.

“Historically, the post-purchase experience has lacked transparency for consumers and been a missed engagement opportunity for both merchants,” said Walker.

He added that Route gives tracking information to both retailers and consumers after purchases are made, which is “an opportunity currently missed by many online brands.”

Walker is a 25-year eCommerce veteran and entrepreneur who got started selling online video games in 1994. He has since founded seven companies and noted that the communications gap between customers and merchants “always plagued” his businesses.

The firm’s RouteBot technology compiles online purchases and tracking information in one place giving merchants and customers the ability to know where packages are in the delivery pipeline.

The artificial intelligence (AI) powering the RouteBot is “trained on tens of thousands of online shopping sites,” Chief Technology Officer Ryan Debenham told VentureBeat.

“The information and tracking piece … are the easier part of the machine learning because they’re more recognizable patterns. Pulling out the specific product data is more challenging … and is something we’re still working on,” Debenham said.

Google announced in August that its Nest doorbell has a package-detecting feature for Nest Hello users with an active Nest Aware subscription. The feature will use the doorbell camera to track package pickups and deliveries.