Shippio

Notes compiled from publicly available sources. Last updated: 2026-07-29. Every figure is linked to the source it came from and dated. Verify against primary sources before relying on them.

TL;DR

Shippio (株式会社Shippio) is a Tokyo-based company founded in June 2016, originally as サークルイン株式会社 (Circle-in Corp.). It operates Shippio Platform, a set of cloud services for international trade and freight — vessel tracking, trade document handling, quotation and ordering, cost analysis — and is simultaneously a licensed freight forwarder and, through its subsidiary 協和海運, a customs broker.

• 1,500+ companies use the platform (service site; Undated; accessed 2026-07-29). Since the 2022 Series B, the company reports net revenue ~20x, containers handled ~35x, and platform users ~8x (2025-10-30).
• Cumulative funding approximately ¥7B, most recently a Series C of ¥3.24B (¥1.87B equity + ¥1.37B debt) closed 2025-10-30, led by DNX Ventures.
• Headcount is stated as "over 100" by the CEO (2026-01-05); the company says it aims to reach 300 within three years (2025-10-30). Undated third-party profiles are not treated as current point estimates.
• Backend is Ruby on Rails and Go on AWS, frontend React/TypeScript over GraphQL (Apollo Federation) (TokyoDev profile, Back-End Engineer posting; Undated; accessed 2026-07-29). The engineering team communicates mainly in English; the Back-End Engineer posting requires English and treats Japanese as welcome but not mandatory (recruit FAQ, posting; Undated; accessed 2026-07-29).

Basic

Memberships and programs: JIFFA 正会員, 日本ロジスティクスシステム協会, 経団連 (joined 2024-10-01), World Cargo Alliance, J-Startup selection (2021-10-21), and 経済同友会, which the CEO joined 2025-10-08. The company took part in the first batch of the Code Republic accelerator, run by YJ Capital and East Ventures, presenting a service called PortHub at its demo day (BRIDGE, 2017-05, 2017-05-08 release).

Awards listed by the company on its company page: 生成AI大賞 2025 特別賞, ニッポン新事業創出大賞 2025 最優秀賞, 日本DX大賞 2025 事業変革部門 大賞, Logistics Tech Startups APAC (2022), LinkedIn Top Startups Japan (2022), Ruby biz Grand prix 2022 大賞. Additionally: DXイノベーション大賞2025 審査員特別賞 (2026-03-17) and Mizuho Innovation Award 2022 3Q (2022-11-25). In the Financial Times / Statista "High-growth companies Asia-Pacific 2026" ranking the company was placed 84th overall and 4th in Logistics & Transportation, where it says it was the only Japanese company (2026-03-24).

Market context as stated by the company

From the Series C release, 2025-10-30:

• Customs clearance permits (通関許可件数) increased eightfold between 2016 and 2024, which the company attributes to growth in e-commerce and import/export volumes.
• The company describes trade operations as still analogue and dependent on individual staff (アナログかつ属人的).
• It names US tariffs and the situation in the Middle East as geopolitical risks increasing supply-chain uncertainty.
• Stated target: handle 30% of Japan-origin/destination cargo — 5.4 million TEU annually — on Shippio Platform by 2030.

Product

Shippio Platform is the umbrella name introduced with the 2025-03-12 mission/vision update, which also renamed the individual services. Product pages live under service.shippio.io.

Service line-up

Feature areas cited on the product pages (Undated; accessed 2026-07-29): automatic vessel tracking with delay alerts; chat and file sharing scoped per shipment; AI-OCR on B/L, invoice and packing list, stated at "97% or higher" reading accuracy; AI invoice-to-purchase-order matching, stated to cut work time by up to 80%; lead-time analytics; quotation and cost simulation. The Forwarding page states 120+ domestic partners and an overseas network across 35+ countries.

Commercialization

Sold as SaaS alongside the company's own forwarding and customs operations, so revenue mixes subscription and transport/clearance work. No comprehensive public price list was found.

• Shippio Works publishes a price on its product page: ¥80,000/month for up to 50 users, with unlimited external guest invitations and unlimited API connections.
• Shippio Forwarding's page states the cloud platform is free when the customer uses Shippio's forwarding services.
• Shippio Cargo and Shippio Clear pricing is not published.
• Shippio API was made free to platform customers on 2025-07-23.

Reported scale over time

Announced customers and partners

The company has also participated in METI's 貿易プラットフォーム利活用推進検討会 (2024-03-28) and an MLIT trade-DX exchange (2025-01-23), and announced a preparatory committee for an industry body promoting trade-DX standardization (2026-05-14).

Stated plans

From the Series C release (2025-10-30), funds are allocated to: (1) product development, with the internal logistics operations team and the group customs broker feeding the development team; (2) AI, via a newly established AI Advanced Lab, first applied to the company's own logistics operations before being reflected into products; (3) further M&A; (4) organization building toward 300 people in three years, across sales, CS, business development, PdM, product design, engineering, HR and corporate. The release states approximately 20 positions were open at the time.

Longer-term target: continuous 2x growth in net revenue and 30% of Japan-origin/destination cargo (5.4 million TEU/year) on the platform by 2030.

Founder

佐藤 孝徳 (Takanori Sato) — co-founder, 代表取締役 CEO (company page).

• Joined Mitsui & Co. as a new graduate; crude oil trading in the petroleum division, then PE and startup investment in the corporate investment division, then planning and driving Mitsui's China strategy from the China representative office in Beijing (note interview, company introduction deck).
• June 2016: co-founded サークルイン株式会社 (later 株式会社Shippio) with 土屋 隆司, who was also posted to Beijing at the time (note interview, 2017-05-08 release).
• 2018: obtained a 第二種貨物利用運送事業者 licence, which the company states was a first for a startup, and launched Shippio Forwarding (BRIDGE, 2018-12).
• 2025-10-08: joined 経済同友会 (release).
• Longer interviews: ロジ人 (JA), STARTUPS JOURNAL (JA), Business Insider Japan (JA), 10th anniversary note (JA).

土屋 隆司 — co-founder; described as 代表取締役副社長 at founding, also ex-Mitsui & Co. (BRIDGE, 2017-05, 2017-05-08 release photo caption). He is not listed on the current company page, which names 佐藤 as sole representative.

Leadership listed in the company introduction deck (version dated 2025-10-30)

Separately announced appointments: Ryan O'Connor as CTO on 2022-11-18 (career listed as DivX 2001, @WalmartLabs 2011, Rakuten 2012, Mercari 2019, Merlogi CTO 2021); 伊達 雄介 (VP of HR) and 丹羽 剛 (VP of Finance) on 2024-01-10; 阪 茉紘 (VP of Strategy) on 2026-01-20, stated to have joined in November 2025. Outside directors: 南 良平 of Globis Capital Partners from the Series A (2019-11-11), and 湯浅 エムレ 秀和 of Globis Capital Partners from 2024-09-11. Raksul CTO 泉 雄介 became a technical advisor on 2021-11-16.

The president of subsidiary 協和海運 has been appointed from Shippio twice: 井上 on 2024-09-02 and 松本, a Shippio group licensed customs specialist, on 2025-09-19.

The deck also states an average employee age of 35.3 and that 40% of employees have children.

Funding

Round labels above follow the company's own releases. The company's own 2017 and 2018 releases use only 第三者割当増資; BRIDGE (2017-05) labelled the 2017 round a seed round. DNX Ventures led both Series B and Series C (Series B, Series C); 環境エネルギー投資, デライト・ベンチャーズ, あおぞら企業投資 and Spiral Innovation Partners appear in both. In the Series C release, New Commerce Ventures' partners state that Shippio was a portfolio company at their previous firm, Z Venture Capital. YJキャピタル, named in the 2017, 2018 and Series A rounds, does not appear in the Series B or Series C releases.

Two rounds were announced alongside product or corporate events: the Series B with the launch of "Any Cargo" and, on the same day, the acquisition of 協和海運; the Series C with a full relaunch of the recruiting site.

Engineering

Technology stack and platforms

Inferred from job postings, the tech blog index, and the TokyoDev profile; labelled as inferred.

• Backend: Ruby on Rails / Ruby, and Go. The TokyoDev profile states "a Ruby on Rails and Go Back-End, deployed on AWS." The Back-End Engineer posting lists Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, Redis, REST API, GraphQL.
• Frontend: TypeScript / JavaScript, React, Apollo Client (Front-End Engineer posting, 2025-09-29; tech blog index).
• API layer: GraphQL via Apollo Federation; REST for the customer-facing Shippio API (SOA deck, Shippio API page).
• Cloud and infra: AWS — ALB, S3, ECS, Aurora, RDS, Lambda, QuickSight, Route 53, CDK — plus GCP and Firebase (posting, Japan Dev).
• Tooling: Docker, GitHub Actions, CircleCI, OpenTofu, ecspresso, Auth0, Datadog, LaunchDarkly, Playwright, Chromatic, Figma (posting, QA posting, tech blog index).

The Back-End Engineer posting lists "Claude/AI" among the tools in use.

Systems

Architecture history. A Speaker Deck presentation dated 2022-12-01 describes a migration from a monolithic Rails application to a service-oriented architecture unified behind Apollo Federation, with new services in Go, a multi-account AWS setup, and a move from Terraform to CDK. The project ran September 2021 to August 2022; the deck states the engineering team was around 8 people at the time, targeting roughly 20 after the Series B. A Japanese summary of the same migration is on the company's note.

The company runs an English-language Tech Blog on Medium, with sections for Frontend, Backend, Infrastructure, QA and Organization and an index of past posts on note. The four most recent posts shown on the recruiting site are dated 2025-08-05, 2025-07-11, 2025-03-25 and 2025-03-05.

Technical background sought

The Back-End Engineer posting prefers cloud-infrastructure experience on AWS or GCP and experience translating business requirements into architecture. The QA posting prefers testing experience on web ERP products; its responsibilities cover test planning, automation and quality improvement for the platform. Logistics background is preferred rather than required. No posting reviewed asks for blockchain, crawling or real-time trading experience.

Industry domain

International freight forwarding and customs clearance — bills of lading, commercial invoices, packing lists, Incoterms, HS codes and origin rules, FCL/LCL ocean freight and air freight, carrier schedules and vessel movements, and the Japanese government systems NACCS and Cyber Port. The company holds forwarding licences itself and owns a customs broker, and the Series C release describes the pairing of an in-house logistics operations team and group customs company with the development team as its distinguishing characteristic.

On whether domain knowledge is a prerequisite, the recruit FAQ states that many members had not worked in trade or international logistics before, that industry knowledge can be picked up after joining, and that about 50% of employees became interested in the trade industry only after starting the selection process. The QA Engineer posting lists a logistics background as preferred, not required.

Working conditions

Notes

Not publicly disclosed

Search scope for the findings below (2026-07-29): the corporate, service and recruiting sites and their press, product, FAQ and careers indexes; Shippio, 株式会社Shippio and former-name searches in Japanese and English; current and archived HERP, TokyoDev and Japan Dev roles; Stoplight documentation; GitHub organisation/name/domain searches; security registries and funding databases.

• Salary bands. Only the QA Engineer posting publishes a range (¥5,000,000–¥7,200,000). The Back-End Engineer posting states salary is discussed at interview; the Front-End Engineer listing on Japan Dev shows no range.
• Current engineering headcount. The company does not publish one. The most specific figures found are the TokyoDev profile ("about 60 people with 20 engineers"; Undated; accessed 2026-07-29) and the 2022-12 SOA deck (~8 engineers at the time, targeting ~20); neither establishes the current count.
• Revenue. Reported only as multiples (net revenue ~20x since 2022), never in absolute terms.
• Pricing for Shippio Cargo, Shippio Forwarding as a standalone product, and Shippio Clear. Only Shippio Works publishes a price.
• Open source. The GitHub organization shippio has 5 public repositories, 4 of which are forks (wkhtmltopdf_binary_gem, ghost-website, evil-seed, gqlgen). The single original repository, slack-tech-support-recorder, was last pushed 2023-01-29. The company was a Platinum sponsor of RubyKaigi 2023 and won Ruby biz Grand prix 2022.
• Status page or published SLA. None found.
• Turnover figures. Not published.

Inconsistencies across sources

• Capital: ¥840M including capital reserve (company page; Undated; accessed 2026-07-29); ¥2.19B (PR TIMES company profile; Undated; accessed 2026-07-29); ¥1.41B including reserve (HERP; Undated; accessed 2026-07-29); ¥1.34B (6th anniversary infographic, 2022-07); ¥651.22M (Series A release, 2019-11). The figures are not monotonically increasing, and the sources do not state whether they refer to 資本金 alone or 資本金+資本準備金 consistently.
• Registered address: the PR TIMES company profile box still lists 浜松町ビルディング15階, although the company announced its move to BLUE FRONT SHIBAURA TOWER S on 2025-09-01. Both addresses are in 芝浦一丁目1番1号.
• Working language: the recruit FAQ says English is not mandatory; Japan Dev describes it as an "English-only workplace" that "does not require Japanese skills"; the QA Engineer posting requires Japanese proficiency, and the new-graduate product posting requires native-level Japanese.
• Remote policy: "up to 4 days remote per week" (Back-End posting) versus "office once per week" (TokyoDev) versus "mandatory Tuesdays in office" (Japan Dev) versus "remote combined with team-by-team attendance" (FAQ).
• Engineering leadership title: Ryan O'Connor was announced as CTO on 2022-11-18; the company introduction deck (version dated 2025-10-30) lists Felix Küppers as VP of Engineering and does not list a CTO, while the Front-End Engineer posting still names a "CTO and CEO interview" as the final loop stage. No release announcing a change of CTO was found.
• ISO 27001 validity: the 2023-05-31 release states a validity period to 2026-05-25; the ISMS registry entry for JQA-IM2002 shows validity to 2029-05-25 under JIS Q 27001:2025 (ISO/IEC 27001:2022+Amd 1:2024). The registry scope reads 国際物流プラットフォームの企画・開発・運営・販売; the 2023 release read デジタルフォワーディングサービスの企画・開発・運営・販売.
• Country coverage: 42 countries as of July 2022 (infographic, Series B) versus "35+ countries" of overseas network on the Forwarding page (Undated; accessed 2026-07-29). The two figures measure different things (locations dealt with versus network coverage) and neither page defines its terms.
• Shippio Works adoption: the 2025-10-23 release states 80+ companies, "the majority of which are JIFFA members," with a next target of 200 described as 35–40% of JIFFA members; the Works product page (Undated; accessed 2026-07-29) still states 80+ companies and "15%+ of JIFFA members."

Other

• The business is not pure SaaS: the company holds first- and second-class freight forwarding licences and an air cargo licence, runs its own forwarding operations, owns a customs broker outright, and became a registered insurance agency in December 2025. The Series C release names further M&A as a use of funds.
• The 協和海運 acquisition (2022-09-27, 100% of shares; the target was founded 1960 and based in Yokohama) has been the subject of several public retrospectives by the company and its investors: Coral Capital (JA), note (JA), MAcloud journal (JA).
• Product naming changed on 2025-03-12, when "Any Cargo" became "Shippio Cargo" and the Shippio Platform umbrella was introduced alongside a new mission (産業の転換点をつくる) and vision (国際物流を、アドバンストに). Releases from 2024 and early 2025 still use the old names.
• Of the 20 most recent items on the company's press index as of 2026-07-29, 10 are trade-show exhibition announcements.
• The API reference is published openly on Stoplight, but the product pages themselves do not link to it; the Shippio API product page directs readers to a contact form instead.
• The company's own press index lags PR TIMES by a few hours to a few days for the newest items; both were checked for this page.

Resources

Official

• Corporate site (JA) · EN
• Company information — profile, licences, awards, memberships · EN
• About us
• Press release index
• Product site — Shippio Platform
• Shippio Forwarding · Shippio Cargo · Shippio Works
• Shippio API — product page · API reference (Stoplight)
• Case studies
• Recruiting site · FAQ · New graduate
• Job listings on HERP — Back-End Engineer, QA Engineer, new-graduate product role
• Tech Blog (Medium, EN) · index of posts on note (JA)
• note (JA) — including SOA migration article and M&A one-year retrospective
• Speaker Deck — company introduction deck, SOA / Apollo Federation talk, Shippio Platform vision
• GitHub organization

Press releases (shippio.io, JA — newest first)

• AI billing-item auto-tagging — 2026-07-28
• Import/export survey — 2026-07-14
• 10th anniversary — 2026-06-24
• Mitsubishi Motors adopts Shippio Cargo — 2026-06-15
• Pre-departure early tracking — 2026-06-12
• AI shipment creation — 2026-05-21
• Trade-DX industry body preparatory committee — 2026-05-14
• AI-OCR extended to cost documents — 2026-05-08
• Cyber Port / NACCS integration — 2026-04-21
• AI-OCR rule auto-learning — 2026-04-01
• FT Asia-Pacific high-growth ranking 2026 — 2026-03-24
• Air cargo automatic tracking — 2026-03-02
• VP of Strategy appointment — 2026-01-20
• File integration API — 2026-01-14
• CEO new year message — 2026-01-05
• Insurance agency registration, Tokio Marine contract — 2025-12-22
• AI invoice matching — 2025-11-18
• Seino Holdings secondment — 2025-11-17
• Series C, ¥3.24B — 2025-10-30
• Shippio Works one year, 80+ companies — 2025-10-23
• 協和海運 new president — 2025-09-19
• Shippio Clear launch — 2025-09-08
• Office move to BLUE FRONT SHIBAURA — 2025-09-01
• Invoice and packing list AI-OCR — 2025-08-12
• Shippio API made free — 2025-07-23
• AI-OCR launch — 2025-04-04
• Mission/vision update and service renames — 2025-03-12
• Shippio Works passes 100 accounts — 2025-01-20
• International air cargo licence — 2024-11-21
• New graduate hiring begins — 2024-11-05
• Keidanren membership — 2024-10-01
• Outside director appointment — 2024-09-11
• Shippio Works launch — 2024-09-04
• Shippio API release — 2024-05-07
• METI trade platform study group — 2024-03-28
• VP of HR and VP of Finance appointments — 2024-01-10
• ISO/IEC 27001:2022 — 2023-05-31
• RubyKaigi 2023 Platinum sponsorship — 2023-05-10
• Any Cargo general availability — 2023-01-25
• CTO appointment — 2022-11-18
• Ruby biz Grand prix 2022 — 2022-11-10
• 協和海運 acquisition — 2022-09-27
• Series B, ¥1.65B — 2022-09-27
• 6th anniversary infographic — 2022-07-20
• Technical advisor appointment — 2021-11-16
• Engineer interview vol.1 — 2021-11-15
• J-Startup selection — 2021-10-21
• Series A, ¥1.06B — 2019-11-11

PR TIMES (JA)

• Series C — 2025-10-30
• Series B — 2022-09-27
• First funding, as サークルイン — 2017-05-08

Third-party coverage and profiles

• BRIDGE — ¥190M round, 2018-12 (JA) · seed round, 2017-05 (JA)
• Kepple — Series C coverage (JA)
• Business Insider Japan — CEO on the Series C (JA)
• PC-Webzine — multi-layer AI agent architecture (JA)
• Coral Capital — on the 協和海運 acquisition (JA)
• ロジ人 — CEO interview (JA)
• STARTUPS JOURNAL — CEO interview (JA)
• TokyoDev — company profile
• Japan Dev — company profile · Front-End Engineer posting, 2025-09-29
• HERP — company profile
• STARTUP DB (JA)
• INITIAL / Speeda (JA)
• ISMS certification registry — JQA-IM2002 (JA)
• Crunchbase