Cargado - Series A, $12M

When you’ve logged more miles in freight tech than most folks have on their odometers, you don’t chase disruption; you orchestrate it. So when Matt Silver and Rylan Hawkins stepped out of stealth and onto the blacktop with Cargado, they didn’t just build a better load board. They built a war room for the $779B U.S.-Mexico freight corridor, a high-frequency, bilingual, multi-currency command center that’s now moving freight like it’s moving markets.

Founded in January 2024 and live by September, Cargado didn’t waste time playing dress-up for venture capital. It earned its runway the old-school way, by delivering real results in a space where relationships still matter and operational friction is currency. Just six months post-launch, the company has onboarded 650+ crossborder carriers representing 44,000 trucks and 130,000 trailers. And they’re not moving widgets. They’re handling Mexico-bound freight for 200+ enterprise clients across 8 sectors, including 23 of the top freight brokerages.

This isn’t your cousin’s SaaS startup doing “AI for logistics.” This is an invite-only loadmarketplace that’s fluent in customscodes, complianceflags, and tariffmath. Real-time bidding? Check. Multi-currency and multi-language support? Check. Elastic AWSinfrastructure? Of course. Carrier vetting with CTPAT baked in? Try finding that on your average freight app.

So it’s no shock they just closed a $12M Series A, led by LGVP, with Conversion Capital, Assembly Ventures, and Friends & Family Capital throwing gas on the fire alongside returning heavyweights Ironspring Ventures, Primary Venture Partners, Z Capital, and Proeza Ventures.. That brings Cargado’s total raise to $21.8M, proof that logistics VCs are done betting on buzzwords and back to betting on execution.

Silver’s track record, ex-Coyote, ex-Forager (acquired by Arrive Logistics), plus Hawkins’ seven-year freight-tech tour from Convoy to Microsoft makes this team part technologist, part tactician. Together, they’ve built more than a company; they’ve built a freight intelligence layer that speaks both Excel and español.

With offices in Chicago, Laredo, El Paso, and San Diego and a Monterrey expansion in motion, Cargado is scaling the southern border like a veteran broker scales lanes. Their 2025 plan? Double the carrier network, drop LTL into the mix, integrate customs APIs, and expand north to Canada. All while pushing the product from load board to full-stack logistics OS with real-time tariff management, near-shoring tools, and freight execution features that actually work.