Trade wars, military conflicts, the rise of e-commerce and sustainability concerns are driving changes to supply chain networks and trade flows. Seventy-four percent of supply chain companies have made changes to their networks in the past two years, according to Gartner. And in an IBM survey, 40% of executives stressed the importance of leverage to weather future crises.
Evan Smith believes that a key part of addressing supply chain stability must include enabling stakeholders, including businesses and governments, to build trust in a shared source of truth across the global supply chain. To that end, he is one of the co-founders of Altana, which uses AI to sift through data points in the supply chain to identify anomalies and identify potential risks and bad actors.
TechCrunch spoke with Smith, led by Omers Ventures, Prologis Ventures, Rifknot Investments, Four More Capital, GV (formerly Google Ventures), Amadeus Capital, Floating Point, and Activate Capital, around the closing of Altana’s $100 million Series B round. and Ridgeline partners. Bringing the startup’s total revenue to $123 million, Altana partnered with Maersk to offer cargo tracking capabilities to help them comply with laws, including the U.S. ban on goods manufactured with forced labor, which went live in June.
“Most of the world’s pressing challenges involve dealing with the failures and side effects of globalization over the past 75 years,” Smith told TechCrunch in an email interview. “Altana is addressing these challenges by enabling governments, logistics providers and enterprises to build a more resilient, secure, inclusive and sustainable globalization defined by trusted networks.”
Altana was founded in December 2018 by Smith, Raphael Teheran, Peter Swartz and Alan Bersin. Prior to Altana, Smith, Teheran and Swartz were with Panjiva, a global business intelligence company, which S&P acquired in 2018. Bersin was assistant secretary for policy at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security during the Obama administration and previously served as commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
What makes Smith Altana unique is the supply chain analytics described above, with a “talk and talk” AI system that interacts with and learns from logistics and business-to-business data. The platform draws together customs authorities, logistics providers and enterprises, creating a common view without aggregating supply chain networks or exposing confidential information.
For example, one of Altana’s features identifies shippers and receivers on a shipment, categorizes items into boxes and shipping containers, and assigns shipment status for customs compliance and security purposes. It also answers general questions about products, deliveries, companies and networks.
A look at Altana’s global supply chain visibility dashboard. Image Credits: Bower
“[Our model] It allows for ‘shared intelligence’ without sharing data – gathering insights from the network while protecting the confidentiality of the data from stakeholders such as governments and businesses, Smith explained. “With each deployment, we connect user data to a living model of our global supply chain and business network. [Altana] It generates learning from the combined data shared across the network, while the underlying user data never leaves each federated and single-tenant environment.
Beyond Maersk, Altana worked with organizations such as the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a UK military and defense think tank, to demonstrate Russia’s efforts to mobilize Western weapons systems during the country’s invasion of Ukraine. Altana recently demonstrated how the system can be used to track the entry of Uyghur labor into the global economy.
Smith in 2010 The need for businesses to understand, gain visibility and navigate the global supply chain is more important than ever – and businesses are realizing this and driving Altana’s growth. For example, 18% of supply chain organizations told Gartner in July that they were conducting a climate change risk assessment, including equipment. Geospatial analysis, drones and AI-driven ecological simulations.
Altana currently has 20 clients, including brands like UPS and several unknown government agencies.
Laws such as the Uyghur Mandatory Labor Protection Act, based on a ‘guilty until proven guilty’ model for any goods imported from China to the US, pose a significant risk to businesses exporting goods to the US, and this is only the tip of the iceberg. The future legislation imposed on the United Kingdom, the European Union and Russia is underway [and others]” said Smith. “The need for businesses to understand, gain visibility and navigate the complex global supply chain is more important than ever.
Altana, like many other supply chain startups, is benefiting from a historic investment boom in the sector. According to Pitchbook, VCs will invest a record $58.4 billion in global supply chain technology companies by 2021. Recently, Tiv, a startup developing supply chain visibility tools, raised $54 million. Supplier experience management platform HICX recently landed $30 million, and FourKites — which helps manage global shipments — nabbed its own latest $30 million in a previously announced, strategic partnership with FedEx.
With signs of trouble ahead — investment in supply chain startups fell 40% year over year in Q2, reflecting the sluggish economy — Smith said Altana is poised for growth in the coming months. The company says it is “running 12x to 15x growth” this year, and plans to increase its workforce to 110 by the end of 2022.
“[Our] Review has 8x growth. [our] Series A,” Smith adds — understating, unfortunately, the actual figure. ” of [Series B] The investment supports the development of a powerful platform and product to empower the world’s governments, logistics providers and businesses to build trusted supply chain networks based on a common source of truth.
