DAT Acquires Freight Intelligence Business From Chainalytics

John Sommers II for Transport Topics

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DAT Solutions has reached a deal to acquire the Freight Market Intelligence Consortium, a subscription-based benchmarking and analysis service, DAT announced June 1.

DAT, which operates an online freight marketplace and produces market intelligence, is gaining the service through a deal with supply chain consulting service Chainalytics. Terms were not disclosed.

“DAT being in the data and analytics business for 10 years now, we knew FMIC well. FMIC knew us, ” DAT President Claude Pumilia told Transport Topics. “We started meeting to get to know each other and do what would be the typical due diligence process. We found on both sides there was a very serious cultural fit.”

DAT Announces Acquisition of Freight Intelligence Business from Chainalyticshttps://t.co/CiSfVVguLW pic.twitter.com/wSmHR5dFS5 — DAT Freight & Analytics (@LoadBoards) June 1, 2020

Chainalytics, which is owned by a private equity firm, began the search for a buyer several months ago.

Pumilia added, “I still recall, when we first met face to face, we were all kind of struck by how well this really fits. We have a perspective that’s really deep on the spot market and FMIC is really deep on the contract market. Things really aligned.”

Pumilia

DAT offers real-time spot market transaction pricing, to which FMIC will add intelligence and rate modeling expertise in the contract market. This combination could position the company to develop new services for analytics and forecasting on the global freight and supply chain markets, DAT said.

“When we met with the team at DAT we quite quickly realized their focus is where we want to be,” Gary Girotti, executive vice president of supply chain intelligence and technology products at Chainalytics, told TT.

DAT said the acquisition extends its market and pricing intelligence to include $118 billion worth of global shipment data across multiple transportation modes, including truckload, less-than-truckload and ocean freight. FMIC represents almost $50 billion in actual freight transactions from roughly 200 companies across manufacturing, retail, wholesale and third-party logistics, DAT said.

Girotti

“They’re very focused on growing and expanding the capabilities of data analytics and its capabilities within the transportation market,” Girotti said. “We have a very complementary customer set. We are very heavily on the shippers’ side but don’t have much of a presence on the brokerage side, while DAT is the reverse. So that worked out quite well.”

FMIC will be integrated into DAT but operate much as it has before. DAT has two main sub-brands; its traditional freight matching side, called DAT One, and its data and analytics side, called DAT iQ.

“DAT iQ is RateView, plus FMIC, plus future data and analytics products,” Pumilia said. “Fundamentally what FMIC will do is accelerate our existing plans in data and analytics and bring us a whole new capability around modeling and the understanding of what’s going on between the shipper markets. It will be part of the DAT iQ offerings.”

Girotti will lead a group within DAT that will be formed out of FMIC.

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