Supply Chain Technology Platforms Receive Financial Investments

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by | Jan 27, 2022

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Investment in supply chain technology and risk management is rapidly increasing as efficiency and sustainability becomes more of a priority across business operations, and two artificial intelligence platform providers announced receiving funding for their systems this week.

Those concerns helped supply chain tech companies raise $24.3 billion in venture funding over the first three quarters of 2021, according to PitchBook, which was 58% more than all of 2020. AI-software providers o9 Solutions and Supply Wisdom are taking part in the growth with investments in their platforms.

A $295 million investment in o9’s system will help the company further develop its integrated business planning platform that will help manage supply chain situations. Supply Wisdom closed an institutional funding round for its AI-enabled risk management platform that continuously monitors third-party supply chain issues. Financial details of that funding were not disclosed.

The o9 platform, called Digital Brain, will help businesses across industries such as retail, manufacturing, automotive, telecom and oil and gas with a digital data platform to detect and predict supply chain demand and risks. The investments come from General Atlantic and its climate investing venture BeyondNetZero, Generation Investment Management, a sustainability investment manager, and existing o9 investor KKR.

The Supply Wisdom platform assesses all risk domains within a supply chain, including with ESG, financial and operations. Its funding came from Fulcrum Equity Partners with participation from Florida Funders.

Tools to monitor supply chains are increasingly necessary with growing pressure from company boards and executives, investors and customers to improve supply chain efficiency and sustainability as well as the need to address disruptions and regulations. Supply chains also face continuing impacts from high energy prices in addition to ESG issues while businesses are seeking improvements and working to meet those sustainability goals.

“The increasing severity and frequency of supply chain and third-party risks proves the need for continuous, full-spectrum risk monitoring,” says Supply Wisdom founder and CEO Atul Vashistha.

Being able to track supply chain efforts is a tool Planet Tracker recently said all investors should request in their companies. Planet Tracker says traceability systems can help businesses track and stay on top of sustainability goals as well as help manage risk and profitability in supply chain systems.

Artificial intelligence and smart systems and data is also becoming a widely used tool in everything from smart buildings and meters to controlling data centers and predicting the carbon impact businesses have.

The Digital Brain platform will help businesses with advanced data and align suppliers, internal stakeholders and customers throughout the integrated supply chain, o9 says. The platform will help the companies build a live, digital model of enterprise data that helps them evaluate supply chain scenarios in real time. That can help organizations make cost effective business decisions and help with sustainability efforts.

Those investing in the o9 venture have valued the company at $2.7 billion, an increase from a $1 billion valuation in April 2020. That was when KKR led the first investment in the company.

“Not only is an agile, intelligent and resilient supply chain one of the most important growth accelerators, it also inherently leads to a reduced carbon footprint – especially for organizations that operate on a global scale,” says Sanjiv Sidhu, chairman and co-founder of o9. “A sustainable supply chain requires companies to digitally transform their planning and decision-making capabilities.”

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