Atlanta is on the short list for Amazon HQ2. But the Georgia capital has already landed the east coast hub of another fast-growing Seattle tech company.
Trucking startup Convoy today announced that it picked Atlanta for the first office outside of its Seattle headquarters. The company plans to hire hundreds of employees at the new office to support its on-demand Uber-like technology platform that matches trucking companies and shippers. It will be staffed by operations, support, and account management teams that can better serve customers on east coast time.
Convoy considered 25 other cities across the U.S., but Atlanta beat out other final candidates Cincinnati and Detroit.
Atlanta is one of the leading centers for supply chain. Corporations such as UPS, Delta, Home Depot, and Westrock are also based there. The city is also among the 20 finalists for Amazon’s second headquarters, which will reportedly be announced soon.
Two former Amazon employees started Convoy in 2015. The company last month raised a massive $185 million investment round led by Alphabet’s venture capital arm that pushed its valuation over $1 billion, joining a select group of “unicorns” in the Seattle region.
Convoy and its investors — which include Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos — see huge opportunity in the U.S. trucking industry, a market valued at $700 billion according to the American Trucking Association, which forecasts 3.4 percent in annual growth of freight volume until 2023.
