sennder secures EUR 228m in debt and equity after turning profitable
The Berlin digital road freight forwarder combined EUR 155 million in working capital facilities with EUR 73 million of equity from existing shareholders led by Scania and Poste Italiane.
sennder, the Berlin-based digital road freight forwarder, said on Wednesday 11 November that it has secured EUR 228 million in new financing. EUR 155 million comes from three debt facilities and EUR 73 million from additional equity invested by existing shareholders, led by truck maker Scania and Poste Italiane.
The package follows sennder's announcement on 21 October that it had turned IFRS EBITDA positive on an unadjusted monthly basis and expects about EUR 1 billion in revenue for 2026. Chief executive David Nothacker told Börsen-Zeitung that the company wants to keep buying businesses in Europe.
How the EUR 228 million breaks down
The largest part is a EUR 100 million non-recourse factoring line with credit insurer Coface. The European Investment Bank adds a EUR 40 million venture debt facility, its second financing for sennder, and cflox and Deutsche Bank provide a EUR 15 million supply chain finance programme. All three facilities are live and already being drawn, the company said.
The facilities fund working capital. A freight forwarder usually pays carriers before its own customers pay, and the new lines bridge that gap. The cflox programme, which runs on Deutsche Bank's cash management infrastructure and has been live since August, lets the more than 40,000 carriers in sennder's network get paid earlier.
Equity from existing shareholders only
The EUR 73 million of equity was subscribed entirely by existing shareholders and was raised over time rather than in a single round. According to the company, EUR 47 million came in the two years leading up to 2026 and a further EUR 26 million this year. The money supported the acquisition and integration of C.H. Robinson's European Surface Transportation business. Tech Funding News lists Accel, Baillie Gifford, HV and Lakestar among sennder's other investors. No valuation was disclosed.
"With profitability achieved, we now have the financial flexibility to accelerate our next phase of growth," Nothacker said in the company's statement.
From coach parcels to a profitable platform
Nothacker, Julius Köhler and Nicolaus Schefenacker founded sennder in 2015. Its platform, sennOS, matches shippers' full truckloads with vetted carriers, many of them small and medium-sized trucking firms. The company grew through acquisitions, including French rival Everoad and Uber Freight's European business, Börsen-Zeitung and Tech Funding News reported.
The C.H. Robinson deal, announced in 2024, was expected at the time to lift combined revenue to EUR 1.4 billion. sennder now expects about EUR 1 billion for 2026. Nothacker told Börsen-Zeitung that the company had sold or discontinued some C.H. Robinson units that were not part of its core business. sennder handles more than 150,000 shipments a month across Europe and expects its first positive operating result for a full year after eleven years, according to the newspaper.
Buy and build, not an IPO
Acquisitions remain part of the plan. Nothacker said the focus is on the DACH region, with further growth planned in Spain, Poland and Romania, where many transport companies struggle with succession and need to modernise, Börsen-Zeitung reported. sennder has raised around EUR 400 million in equity in total, which he described as enough to pursue the buy-and-build approach in the coming years.
He called Europe's public capital markets tense and said a stock market listing, once discussed for sennder, is less attractive today. For now, the company is working mainly with banks and private investors, he told the paper. sennder also plans to roll out its platform and AI agents to shippers, carriers and other freight forwarders.
What it means for European founders and investors
sennder's package shows a path that becomes available once a scale-up reaches profitability. Rather than a large priced round, it combined asset-backed debt, development bank money and insider equity, which limits dilution. For businesses with large working capital needs, such as logistics, marketplaces and fintech lending, factoring and supply chain finance can free up equity for growth.
For investors, the deal is a reminder that some of Europe's later-stage companies are choosing debt and acquisitions over listings while public markets stay difficult. It also shows the role of the EIB as a repeat lender to European scale-ups. We covered the bank's wider programme in our report on the EIB's EUR 10 billion Tech Champions first close, and a similar mix of debt and growth capital in Return's EUR 835 million battery storage financing.
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