01 November 2022

Solvo.ai is announcing that has raised a $4 million seed round to help the logistics industry build stronger supply chains at a time when economic, political, and environmental conditions are becoming increasingly difficult to predict, and leaders in the sector are ever so concerned that supply chains should be robust, not just efficient.

The startup is focused on improving decision making in the supply chain and logistics sector. Its first product, an A.I.-powered dynamic pricing engine for enterprise, was created in collaboration with one of the world's largest logistics businesses.

“Logistics is a $5 trillion industry and the backbone of global trade. But the disruption caused by Covid-19, trade wars, and the conflict in Ukraine has shown just how vulnerable supply chains are,” explains Solvo.ai CEO and co-founder Gaurav Bajaj. “With the accelerating impact of climate change, and pressures around the transition to net zero and sustainability, the future looks even more uncertain and complex.”

According to analysis by McKinsey, companies can now expect supply chain disruptions lasting a month or longer to occur every 3.7 years, and every decade companies can expect to lose 42% of one year’s EBITDA. Solvo.ai is tackling this with practical A.I. to make supply chains resilient, agile, and self-learning by design.

Logistics fit for the future

Existing software targeting the logistics sector is largely rules-based, and struggles to make optimal decisions under uncertainty. As the world becomes harder to predict, this is no longer enough, making the software far less effective.

'Solvo.ai’s reinforcement learning technology is trained on real logistics data and allows logistics professionals to make better informed decisions, adapting to their changing goals over time. The optimisation engine can quickly adapt to new situations, helping logistics companies recover faster from disruption by factoring uncertainties into its models.'

Human input, informed by A.I., is an important part of Solvo.ai’s approach. “Our ‘white box’ approach ensures decision makers get an 'under the hood' explanation of our A.I. recommendations,” says Bajaj. “Our A.I.-driven workflows allow experts to make the right trade-offs by applying their judgment, value, and context to the recommendations our algorithms present.”

The new investment

The new funding round was led by Speedinvest and Frontline Ventures. The fresh funds will be used to scale the commercialization of Solvo.ai’s first product and to ramp up sales and business development.

Solvo.ai has assembled a world-class global team with more than 100 years of combined experience in logistics, artificial intelligence, and building successful startups.

Bajaj, who previously commercialized A.I. technology at engineering tech startup Secondmind, launched Solvo.ai with Secondmind co-founder Dr. Dongho Kim. Kim’s previous work included developing an A.I.-powered dialogue system that became part of Apple’s Siri.

Among the products Solvo.ai is working on is software to help supply chain professionals optimize their network and deployment of assets, as the startup builds out its suite of solutions.

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“There is huge potential in using machine learning to discover new patterns in supply chains that can revolutionize business. The latest developments in deep learning make it possible to capture these patterns through algorithms and identify the most influential factors in supply chain ecosystems, while constantly learning in the process. Gaurav, Dongho and the entire Solvo.ai team have a highly complementary mix of charisma and ambition, combined with serious technical capabilities. We are very excited to back them in building the leading AI platform in the supply chain industry. – Rick Hao, Partner at Speedinvest

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"Supply chains are a vitally important global network, and in the last decade we have seen them become increasingly complex and interdependent. More recently, we have also seen that macro events, and uncertainty around how they might unfold, can have devastating impacts on those chains. Enter Solvo.ai, whose suite of products go beyond applying historic data to modern problems, and instead learn in real-time how to respond to any radical market changes, enabling businesses to achieve their KPIs. We are hugely excited by what they are building and the important impact it can have on a rapidly changing industry." – Zoe Chambers, Partner at Frontline Ventures