Supply chain startup Atomic came out of stealth last year with founders who promised to use their experience at Tesla to streamline inventory and boost customers’ bottom lines. At its core, Atomic decides how much inventory a company should have, and where, by simulating scenarios, then recommending, or even automatically choosing, a response. The approach traces back to a crisis.
Atomic’s founders built an early version of this system at Tesla during the 2018 Model 3 production ramp, when the automaker’s own spreadsheets couldn’t keep up with how quickly planning needed to change. But in the year-plus since Atomic co-founders Michael Rossiter and Neal Suidan started talking publicly about their work, that shift has become real for customers — including big tech companies like DoorDash and HelloFresh. It has paid off financially, too.
Atomic’s annual recurring revenue has quintupled since the beginning of this year, according to Jon McNeill, a former Tesla president and the founder of DVx Ventures, where Atomic was incubated. That growth just helped Boston-based Atomic lock down a $12.5 million Series A funding round, bringing its total funding to just north of $15 million to date. The new round was led by growth equity firm Klass Capital and Seattle VC stalwart Madrona Venture Group.
Atomic has also brought on longtime Tesla planning director Jeff Goodrich as its CTO and third co-founder. And each new industry Atomic works in presents different challenges, Rossiter said. But it was also Atomic’s ability to deploy quickly with new customers.
Suidan, who is also Atomic’s chief product officer, ran point on that challenge, McNeill said. He was able to push Atomic’s agentic AI to the point it was able to figure out the “decision rules” that a customer’s staff might have, even if they hadn’t been written down anywhere. And this was one of our first principles at Tesla.
When I got to know Elon, he said the thing that will separate us from all of our competitors is decision speed, because decision speed compounds. Like, I make a decision today, I build on that decision tomorrow, et cetera, and it takes one of our competitors, like Ford or Toyota, 30 days to make the first decision.” Rossiter said he’s excited to help pull customers’ supply chain efforts out of spreadsheets and into advanced software that can help make planning decisions. It’s an evolution he’s seen CFOs lead for their own organizations, but he said it’s rarer to find someone doing the same for operations.
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