PAXAFE, an AI and machine learning start-up transforming the way supply chain risk is calculated and underwritten, announced a $2.25 million seed round of funding led by Ubiquity Ventures, bringing funds raised to date to over $3.2 million. The new capital will be used to accelerate the rollout of PAXAFE’s commercial platform to more enterprise customers while strengthening their AI-driven prediction models.
PAXAFE has developed a contextualisation platform that enables predictive routing, time of arrival and adverse event prediction for B2B shipments. While many providers offer some form of real-time visibility, PAXAFE goes further by providing customers with the contextualisation they need to transform shipment visibility into actionable steps and measurable business value.
For decades, a fundamental lack of product-level visibility through the global supply chain has resulted in product losses and operational inefficiencies. In the last 5-10 years this lack of visibility meant that shippers, logistics carriers and insurance providers had limited shipment data. Today the problem is quite the opposite, with an abundance of data from sensors, ELDs and aggregator platforms. However, this overwhelming stream of data doesn’t drive smarter decision-making because it lacks the context and appropriate structure that B2B shippers require to take action.
While there is no shortage of asset tracking and visibility platforms available, cargo losses keep rising year over year, and cargo loss ratios are not improving. According to Cloudleaf and Sapio Research, in the pharmaceutical supply chain alone, there is $35 billion worth of annual losses specific to just temperature-controlled logistics challenges. This number grows considerably when taking other types of adverse events (e.g. theft, counterfeiting, damage, product loss) as well as other industries’ supply chains–food, technology and manufacturing, into account. Current solutions in the market are the equivalent of fire detectors – once a problem occurs, they wake up and notify stakeholders that something is wrong. What they cannot do is actually diagnose the ‘how’ and ‘why’ behind that particular event of interest. Without a precise and automated diagnosis, B2B shippers find it virtually impossible to build accurate and consistent prediction models that enable supply chain risk mitigation across future shipments.
‘Having seeded the consumer lost-and-found tracker Tile as well as several other smart hardware companies, I’m always on the lookout for the next large problem to be solved by “software beyond the screen”’, said Sunil Nagaraj, Partner at Ubiquity Ventures. ‘By thoughtfully applying smart hardware and AI, PAXAFE has early customers raving about their solution in a way that I rarely see for such a young company.’
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Over the past 6 months, PAXAFE has launched a series of paid pilots with leading enterprises across healthcare, perishables, oil & gas, logistics, manufacturing, jewellery and insurance verticals. The company has also recently launched its commercial version of its platform, converting a number of its pilot customers to commercial partners.
‘PAXAFE’s CONTXT intelligence platform has helped UrbanStems optimise its inbound supply chain, streamline communications and relationships with vendors and 3PLs, and reduce overall product loss’, said Orion Kobayashi, Senior Category Manager, UrbanStems. ‘We can’t be at every cross-dock or drop off point, but PAXAFE’s platform helps our team contextualise how people are handling the product in real-time and lets us know exactly when it’s going to arrive. This data-driven approach transforms potentially tough conversations with vendors into specific information that they can leverage to improve their operations and service levels, which enables UrbanStems to deliver the freshest flowers of the utmost quality to consumers.’
‘Supply chain visibility brought us here today, but contextualisation is the future’, said Ilya Preston, co-founder and CEO of PAXAFE. ‘This new funding will allow us to expand our team with people who are passionate about our mission to redefine supply chain risk management.’
