7bridges picks up $3.4m seed

London-based 7bridges, a provider of an optimization engine that helps businesses scale and automate logistics and supply chains, has raised $3.4 million in seed funding. Crane Venture Partners and LocalGlobe led the round.

PRESS RELEASE

25 June, London: 7bridges has launched its AI-powered optimisation engine to help businesses scale and automate logistics and supply chains. The company aims to transform operations so that businesses of any size and in any sector can deliver logistics excellence, by fulfilling their customers’ orders in the most reliable, efficient and sustainable way possible.

7bridges is backed by a $3.4M seed funding round, which was co-led by Crane Venture Partners and LocalGlobe, allowing the roll-out of the Logistics Engine Optimisation ‘L.E.O’ technology to clients globally, in industries from retail and fashion to med-tech and manufacturers.

The platform’s proprietary technology allows businesses to transform outdated, rules-based logistics processes into agile and automated systems that continuously adapt to change. Recently, this has proved invaluable for businesses reacting to COVID-19, with the platform enabling fulfilment to continue despite warehouse shutdowns.

The 7bridges platform allows direct integrations to carriers and other fulfilment solutions via its global partner ecosystem, as well as integrations to tools such as ERPs to enhance data visibility and accessibility.

Its ready-made automation tools enable businesses to control and optimise all areas of their logistics including auditing costs, document creation, performance analysis and procurement. The AI-powered platform also continuously suggests optimal logistics strategies, by simulating and predicting the impact of changes in the supply chain in the context of business constraints and goals.

Philip Ashton, co-founder and CEO of 7bridges, said: “Customer expectations of deliveries have fundamentally shifted over the past few years, in terms of both speed and sustainability. While this dramatically increases the costs and complexity of the logistics category, it has created an opportunity to gain an enormous competitive advantage. At 7bridges, we enable businesses of any scale to rapidly implement and manage agile, efficient and sustainable logistics operations that can adapt to any market eventuality and keep the business moving.”

Scott Sage, partner at Crane Venture Partners, said: “Like many other industries, from banking to construction, supply chains are becoming rapidly digitised across the economy. This creates an incredibly important opportunity for disruption. We’re always on the lookout for passionate founders who have experienced the problem they’re working to fix, and are proud to be working alongside the 7bridges team – there’s no substitute for their level of expertise.”

George Henry, partner at LocalGlobe, said: “COVID-19 has highlighted the importance of logistics resilience, for large businesses and SMBs alike. 7bridges is offering a unique A.I powered solution for building scalable, adaptive logistics systems – so that organisations can continue to fulfil their customers’ orders whatever the future holds. We’re excited to be part of the 7bridges journey, as the team leads the way in logistics evolution.”

About 7bridges
7bridges was co-founded in 2016 by Philip Ashton and Matei Beremski, with the aim of transforming and democratising logistics with smart technology. As a consultant and analyst in the field, Ashton had experienced first-hand the systemic issues in logistics and saw an opportunity to use A.I to reduce waste and increase efficiency across all types of businesses. Beremski, a former machine learning and big data specialist at IBM and BNP Paribas had extensive experience in the application of ML techniques to web applications in supply chains and began to build the ‘Synapse’ technology that powers the 7bridges platform.