At the UP.Summit, J.B. Hunt Transport Inc. and UP.Labs, a venture lab for transportation and mobility, announced the establishment of their Logistics Venture Lab.
"From the inception of modern intermodal transit to digital freight matching platforms to emerging safety technology and beyond, J.B. Hunt has always been people-focused, technology-empowered, and capacity-driven, and we’ve been on an innovation journey since our founding in 1961,” said Shelley Simpson, president and CEO at J.B. Hunt. “Our collaboration with UP.Labs will continue this journey as we look for new ways to disrupt, adapt, and accelerate across the transportation industry."
The logistics and freight-focused lab will aim to launch as many as six startups over the next three years to solve core strategic challenges within the industry. The startups, the first of which the companies target to begin launching in 2025, are inspired by opportunities to drive efficiency and solve common problems faced by providers in the logistics and freight transportation space. They will focus on key industry service areas such as brokerage, dedicated, intermodal, and truckload, among others.
See also: J.B. Hunt kicks off Clean Energy’s Class 8 demo truck program
“I’m thrilled to be collaborating with J.B. Hunt, a leader in the transportation and logistics industry. Through the Logistics Venture Lab, we will launch startups rooted in big data, GenAI, and emerging technologies to solve industry problems with some of the world's best entrepreneurs,” John Kuolt, founder and CEO of UP.Labs, said. “Having successfully collaborated with Porsche AG, Alaska Airlines, and an undisclosed retail corporate partner, we’re excited to bring our unique venture lab model to a new transportation sector—logistics and freight.”
UP.Labs is a venture lab and a core part of the UP.Partners ecosystem, which includes mobility investment fund UP.Ventures and the annual UP.Summit. Since its founding in 2022, UP.Labs has worked with corporate partners to identify their most pressing challenges and launch startups built by entrepreneurs, product leaders, and technologists to develop solutions.
Once these companies have matured, the corporate partners will have the option to acquire them. J.B. Hunt represents UP.Labs’ fourth corporate partnership with the mission of bringing innovation to the forefront of the transportation industry.
