Ameba raises $7.1M seed round to transform global supply chains with its AI-driven platform
- Ameba’s AI-powered platform gives brands real-time insights into their entire supply chains, providing a one-stop-shop tool to react to data and generate growth without system change
- The startup was founded by Cedrik Hoffmann, former supply chain director and co-founder of e-commerce giant VALOREO, and former Palantir engineer Craig Massie
- The Seed round, raised less than a year after Ameba’s pre-seed, will drive the company’s expansion into new markets and sectors
London, [19th September], 2024 - Ameba, the AI-driven platform that helps companies manage and unlock growth within their complex supply chains, has today announced a $7.1M seed round led by Hedosophia. Leading European early-stage investor Visionaries Club reinvested, having led Ameba’s pre-seed round, and Anamcara also participated.
With a world-class founding team, a transformative product, and a $45.2bn market opportunity to solve global supply chains for brands, Ameba’s momentum has attracted strong interest from investors. Having already partnered with customers across the CPG and home decor markets, the funding will be used to fuel Ameba’s expansion into fashion and textiles, with a view to becoming the go-to supply chain partner for industry.
A single source of truth
Ameba was founded by Cedrik Hoffmann, former supply chain director and co-founder of e-commerce giant VALOREO, and former Palantir engineer Craig Massie, who built the firm’s leading data privacy tool deployed to every customer of the firm today. Having seen first-hand the bottlenecks supply chains can bring to businesses, and as consumer expectations for speed, cost-efficiency, and sustainability rise, Ameba was built to transform these outdated processes.
Ameba automates the extraction of supply chain data from a range of typically disparate sources, in different languages – emails, WhatsApps, PDFs, Excel sheets and more. It brings this data together into a single platform, built on top of existing workflows, and uses AI to translate and transform the raw data into actionable insights so teams can see their entire supply chain in real time. With insights into the status of every product on the supply journey, clients can predict disruptions and react quickly to delays, changing costs and failed quality control audits. Ameba’s AI also automates communication, real-time updates and proactive alerts to enable faster decision-making and greater efficiency across the entire chain.
“Ameba is the first system that sits on top of any existing process and software, capturing this critical data without requiring any supplier onboarding or workflow changes,” said Craig Massie, co-founder and CTO of Ameba. “It allows users to automate supplier interactions in any language through their existing communication channels – significantly reducing manual data input that prior to Ameba used to take up 30% of time and made important strategic tasks a forced second priority.”
Market challenges
Research has shown that disruptions to supply chains can cause as much as a 62% loss for the average business, and reducing supply chain costs by as little as 4% can double profitability. Some 40% of customers would prefer to switch brand or retailer than wait for out-of-stock items, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) found that supply chain disruptions reduce global GDP growth and can even fuel inflation. These three stats show why the global Supply Chain Management market size is set to rise to $45.2 billion in the next three years.
At the same time, the consumer product and retail market – worth $21.1 trillion in 2023 – is facing constant pressures to adapt to consumer demands and regulation. Established brands can introduce anywhere from 12,000 to 1.3 million new products a year, while regulators are pushing forward with the roll-out of Digital Product Passports (DPPs) to boost supply chain transparency.
"Brands today face intense pressure to meet rapid shifts in consumer trends while delivering on expectations for fast, low-cost, and sustainable supply chains,” said Cedrik Hoffmann, co-founder and CEO of Ameba. “Many of the biggest names in fashion still manage their supply chain data on Excel and communicate with suppliers via email or WhatsApp. We want to transform customers’ operation while meeting them where they are today. With Ameba, we’re turning supply chains from bottlenecks into engines of growth.”
A growing track record
British interior hardware and lighting company, Plank uses Ameba to manage over 300 products from over 20 suppliers across Asia and Europe in real-time. Within the first 3 months Ameba already generated over 140 alerts, including critical production and delivery delays that would have otherwise been overlooked.
Another customer, Evelien Kahn, founder and CEO of MDV, a leading European distributor of beauty brands, praised Ameba’s efficiency: "Ameba has changed how we operate. Not only are we on top of our supply chain, including inbound and outbound orders, but we’ve also become more scalable and agile. Our business is thriving as a result.”
Isabella Yamamoto, Principal at Visionaries Club, added: “We’ve seen immense downward pressure on supply chains across all industries, with organisations fighting against increasing complexity and fragmentation in their supplier base. After speaking to supply chain owners, we saw the strong potential for AI to eliminate this fragmentation and generate a real-time single ‘source of truth’, and Ameba’s customers are seeing how this value unlock can become a competitive advantage for their business. When we met Cedrik and Craig, we knew that their deep expertise in supply chains and data privacy, drive and passion were the right ingredients to build a disruptive and enduring business, and we’re delighted to be on this journey with them.”
About Ameba
Ameba is an AI-platform providing a self-updating source-of-truth for a company’s supply chain that draws on all ****supplier communications, attachments, and uploaded files. Ameba allows buying and merchandising teams to instantly collaborate and take immediate actions on the latest data to prevent stockouts, reduce costs, and automate manual data inputs. Ameba was founded in 2023 by the co-founder and supply chain director of VALOREO and the engineer behind Palantir’s leading data privacy tool.
About Hedosophia
Hedosophia is a global early growth investor that supports category-defining Internet and technology companies. The company is based in London, England, United Kingdom.
About Visionaries Club
Visionaries Club is a leading early-stage venture capital fund with offices in London and Berlin, investing across Europe through its Seed and Early Growth funds. Visionaries’ LP community unites Europe’s leading unicorn founders with a huge network of family business entrepreneurs, who are looking to digitise traditional industries. This includes founders of successful tech companies UiPath, Miro, Wolt, Flixbus, Supercell, Zalando, Mollie, Spotify, Personio, Adyen, HelloFresh and Skype alongside industrial giants such as Swarovski, Miele, Mittal, Haniel, Stihl, and Siemens. With its unique network and B2B investment focus, Visionaries is bridging the information asymmetry of “what's possible” in the technology startup space and “what is actually needed” in the industrial space by partnering with the next generation of software superstars.
