E-commerce logistics startup Stord acquires UPS subsidiary

Logistics startup Stord said Monday that it is buying UPS subsidiary Ware2Go as it looks to expand its footprint in the e-commerce space.

The company declined to provide specifics on the purchase price of the deal.

The Atlanta-based company founded by former Thiel fellow Sean Henry said the acquisition will boost Stord’s competitive edge as it looks to chip away at the e-commerce space dominated by the likes of Amazon.

Ware2Go is a third-party delivery company that looks to make quick delivery more accessible for merchants, according to its website.

Henry told CNBC the acquisition builds on the company’s push to “level the playing field” against companies such as Amazon’s Prime for checkout and fulfillment services for smaller businesses by offering the infrastructure.

“The hardest problem for all these independent merchants across the rest of the internet and trying to compete with Prime is really scale,” he said. “Logistics is still a physical world where you need a lot of packages, a lot of inventory spread very close to a lot of consumers to be able to offer that level of rapid delivery.”

Stord’s acquisition comes as tariff uncertainty threatens to uproot the freight and logistics space, but Henry said disruptions like this and past events such as the Covid-19 pandemic typically benefit the platform.

“A lot of disruption tends to drive a lot of volume onto our platform because these brands realize they can’t really combat this themselves,” he said.

Stord said the acquisition adds 2.5 million square feet to the company’s existing network of 13 facilities in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and the Netherlands and more than 70 partner sites worldwide.

The e-commerce logistics company founded in 2015 has been on an acquisition spree in recent months as it looks to expand its full-cycle fulfillment and shipping services. It scooped up Pitney Bowes’ e-commerce fulfillment business and freight and logistics platform ProPack in 2024.

Stord’s backers include Kleiner Perkins, Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Franklin Templeton and Strike Capital.

Henry started Stord as an 18-year-old and dropped out of the Georgia Institute of Technology after winning a spot in the exclusive Thiel Fellowship that offers grants to aspiring entrepreneurs. He said Thiel’s lessons on building a defensible competitive advantage helped drive Stord’s value proposition.

“If we are the one who’s building our own technology in harmony with our operations, from every stage all the way through the cart … it’s gonna be really hard for others to keep up,” he told CNBC.