London’s AI-powered logistics platform 7bridges raises $17 million

Using artificial intelligence to help businesses transform their supply chains, London-based 7bridges has raised $17 million in a Series A funding round. The new capital is slated to help the company increase the size of its commercial team, and thus client base. Likewise, 7bridges intends to continue the development of its offer, bringing more and improved flexible, sustainable and cost-effective logistics solutions to both customers and consumers. To date, 7bridges has raised $20.4 million.

Chances are, if you’re living on planet earth (and that’s a big hello to our readers from Mars), you’ve been in one way or another affected by the ongoing global supply chain, “issues”. And when 7bridges was founded in 2016, there’s no way anyone could have predicted just how many many of these issues would be brought to light.

In so much, what we’ve uncovered here is the symptom and not the cause, as businesses have been struggling for years to retool supplier and distribution networks, often stumbling over disconnected data sources latent in outdated technologies and time-intensive manual processes.

So dire is the issue that according to a McKinsey & Company report, “A whopping 85 percent of respondents struggled with inefficient digital technologies in their supply chains.”

Using AI and big data 7bridges is seeking to help logistics providers put a stop to the systemic waste of money and resources through series of flexible and adaptable optmisations to an outdated process..

“By harnessing our artificial intelligence to make coherent rapid and adaptive decisions across channels, product categories, geographies and service providers we’re able to transform multiple elements of the supply chain, from planning to execution, inbound and outbound logistics, inventory optimisation to customer experience.,” explained co-founder and CEO Philip Ashton.

7bridges' $17 million Series A funding round was led by Eight Roads, the round also saw participation from Maersk Growth, the venture arm of the global logistics giant. Alongside Eight Roads’ continued support, the strategic financial investment from Maersk Growth also includes the startup to provide clients with even greater information about their supply chains thanks to an opening of the doors of Maersk’s global logistics network and data.

“7bridges have developed a novel technology solution to digitalise the design, management and optimization of supply chains,” commented Maersk Growth’s Oliver Finch. “7bridges will enable a wider range of businesses to better harness the power of data and AI to support commercial decision-making. We believe 7bridges has the potential to address a largely unmet market need and significantly improve companies’ supply chains.”