Nuvo, a company that has built a social platform similar to that to facilitate easier purchase of physical goods among businesses and raised $34 million in Series A from Sequoia Capital and Spark Capital, specifically telling TechCrunch.

The San Francisco-based startup previously raised $11 million in an undisclosed seed round led by Founders Fund and Index Ventures in early 2022. Other institutional backers include Foundation Capital, Human Capital and Susa Ventures.

Angel investors Gokul Rajaram, Instacart founder Max Mullen, Rippling Coo Matt Macinnis, Samsara founder Sanjit Biswas, John Bicket and Flexport founder Ryan Petersen also wrote the checks into Nuvo.

CEO and co-founder Sid Malladi founded Nuvo in 2021 with CTO Rameez Remsudeen, providing businesses with a way to create personal profiles that can be shared with trading partners. Think of it as a LinkedIn for B2B trade.

Businesses purchasing physical goods, such as wood and electronic parts, and credit agreements that support these purchases are the US $11 trillion industry. But it's an industry that's plagued by old-fashioned communication methods such as fax, phone and email, Remsuddin said.

With tariffs looming, demand for such platforms may never have been greater.

“For tariffs or other reasons, for tariffs or other reasons, it will lead to changes in all trade partnerships that need to deal with changes in prices, risks or other parameters,” Malladi, former product manager at Yelp, told TechCrunch. “Nothing this does not go smoothly when relying on the pen and paper process.”

Nuvo wants to help businesses connect with their trading partners faster and access information such as reputation, banking data and partner history faster. By helping businesses connect and verify each other, Nuvo claims that it can also lead to fewer fraud, losses, delays and fewer administrative overhead.

So, how does it work? Sellers invite buyers to join the platform. These buyers can in turn contact other sellers. Users create business identity profiles, and the platform verifies their information in real time. Users can also get customer references, credit reports, FICO scores and license verification in the NUVO customer dashboard. Additionally, customers have the potential to connect with new suppliers, ensure better credit terms and simplify their purchasing process, noted Bryan Schreier, a Sequoia partner.

“The potential of network effects reminds us of other great companies, Sequoia, which is fortunate, including payment giants Paypal and Stripe,” he told TechCrunch. “As new customers join Nuvo, they bring buyers and sellers and in the process create a data platform to continue to evolve. By bringing B2B Commerce online, Nuvo enables businesses to be confident and secure.”

Malladi notes that there are other companies that are trying to do something similar.

“The key difference is that Nuvo is not a single-person SaaS tool. It’s a network,” Remsudeen said. “It’s like comparing your contacts app to Facebook, in terms of managing your social relationships.”

By the end of the second quarter, Nuvo currently has 42 employees and its trading network will have approximately 50,000 businesses, including Great Dane, Southern Glazer's Wine & Spirits and Fender. The company currently charges annual subscription fees.

Nuvo’s core markets are alcohol and beverages, building materials, chemicals, distribution, food services and manufacturing industries. It hopes to expand into new verticals as well as advertising features such as payments and AI. It is also trying to expand internationally and is focusing on markets such as Mexico, Latin America, Europe and Asia Pacific.