London-based 7bridges, an AI-powered optimisation engine for businesses to scale and automate logistics and supply chains, announced on Monday that it has raised $17M (approx €14.89M) in its Series A round of funding.
The round was led by global venture capital fund Eight Roads with support from existing investors Local Globe and Crane, and a strategic investment from Maersk Growth, the venture arm of the global logistics giant Maersk.
The investment from Maersk Growth will help 7bridges clients with more informed, predictive, and insightful supply chain decision-making due to the synergies between 7bridges AI and Maersk’s global logistics network and data.
Oliver Finch, Investment Partner at Maersk Growth, says, “The last two years have drawn supply chains directly into the commercial spotlight. There is an urgent need to innovate in the sector and maintain access to goods we rely on. 7bridges have developed a novel technology solution to digitalise the design, management, and optimisation of supply chains. 7bridges will enable a wider range of businesses to better harness the power of data and AI to support commercial decision-making.”
Capital utilisation
The proceeds from this round will help the company increase the reach of its AI-powered logistics platform, grow its commercial team, and invest in its technology and data.
Philip Ashton, CEO and co-founder of 7bridges, says, “At 7bridges, we are positioned to help businesses enhance, and future-proof, their supply chains in ways that are more sustainable, resilient, cost-effective, and efficient. By harnessing our artificial intelligence to make coherent rapid and adaptive decisions across channels, product categories, geographies, and service providers we’re able to transform multiple elements of the supply chain, from planning to execution, inbound and outbound logistics, inventory optimisation to customer experience.”
The AI-Powered Logistics Platform
Founded in 2016 by Philip Ashton and Matei Beremski, 7bridges aims to enable autonomous supply chains that are customer-centric, resilient to disruption, more cost-effective, help to decrease waste, and improve access to goods worldwide.
The platform is used by some of the world’s top retail, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, and distribution brands across their supply chains to give them increased logistics visibility and the ability to execute operations across their supply chains.
How was 7bridges born?
Philip Ashton, who had spent time working at a speciality logistics provider, saw first-hand the challenges that companies faced with their logistics. Ashton witnessed that money and resources were being wasted consistently by organisations of all sizes and across all industries. He saw that the problem was systemic – but realised it was possible to create a solution.
Ashton then brought his long-time friend Matei Beremski on board to help him realise his vision.
Matei was at IBM at the time, where he was building machine learning methods into web applications in the early days of the big data boom. Seeing the size of the opportunity and the transformative potential of a data-driven approach to logistics they decided to start 7bridges to bring a new way of thinking to the market.
The team has expanded its services across Europe and the US, and supports customers around the world.
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