This year, Michigan-based company, Llamasoft released its latest tool, an AI-driven platform for managing supply chains intelligently. In January, the llama.ai platform was launched, set to be delivered as a SaaS offering. Founded in 2002, the shift into AI territory garnered attention from investors, and one company in particular.
Coupa Software, a publicly traded company that helps large corporations manage spending, has announced its acquisition of Llamasoft for $1.5 billion. Its new AI capabilities certainly played a part in attracting the attention of Coupa, as the company looked for a supply chain application to complement its spend management capabilities.
Coupa CEO and chairman Rob Bernshteyn certainly thinks that this partnership will produce a powerful combination. “Llamasoft’s deep supply chain expertise and sophisticated data science and modeling capabilities, combined with the roughly $2 trillion of cumulative transactional spend data we have in Coupa, will empower businesses with the intelligence needed to pivot on a dime,” Bernshteyn said in a statement.
Llamasoft has two decades of experience in supply chain network design. During that time,
it has built up an impressive customer list of leaders in the supply chain, such as Boeing, Danone, DHL, GM, Home Depot, Kimberly-Clark, and Nestle.
The company has raised more than $56 million, according to Crunchbase. Its largest raise was a $50 million Series B in 2015 led by Goldman Sachs. The company generated more than $100 million in revenue and has 650 large customers.
The acquisition arrives at a time when companies are more focused on digitizing processes across enterprise, and when supply chains can be uncertain. The AI-based Llamasoft technology builds a digital model of the supply chain in order analyze potential outcomes and aid decision making. Adding Coupa's data about supplier performance and spend patterns will help inform the model and should make decision making more accurate.
The move into supply chain planning is consistent with Coupa's increasing use for direct purchasing of production materials and components alongside its original focus on indirect spend. The company aspires to act as a single collaboration layer between an enterprise and all of its suppliers.
