Arkestro Lands $26 Million in Series A Funding

Arkestro is the leading Predictive Procurement Orchestration platform, and now it’s about to undertake the next stage in its growth story. The company is pleased to announce that it has successfully landed Series A funding of $26 million.  

This round of funding was led by NEA, Construct, Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT) and Four More Capital, a division of Henry Crown & Company. This fresh funding will be used to accelerate growth, enabling Arkestro to further help customers amplify the impact of procurement’s influence across their enterprises using behavioral science, game theory and predictive machine learning models applied at a massive scale.

Jeffrey Immelt, Venture Partner at NEA says, “Arkestro’s embedded platform unlocks clear business value by empowering enterprises to scale their most efficient purchasing decisions, resulting in accelerated savings and improved supplier experience. Arkestro is composed of a strong and diversified team of technical and GTM leaders with a differentiated, AI-powered solution that meets growing market needs for one-stop procurement and supply chain optimization.” If that name sounds familiar, it’s because, for 16 years, Immelt was the CEO of General Electric—one of the largest and most historic companies in U.S. history.

Immelt understands the importance of purchasing to a company’s success, especially with the ever-increasing complexities of today’s business environment. He saw something in Arkestro, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to deliver the many advantages of predictive procurement to companies worldwide. Immelt also wrote the foreword of our CEO’s recent book, Predict and Win.

“For decades, NEA has invested in companies addressing a broad spectrum of enterprise challenges,” added Scott Sandell, Managing General Partner, NEA. “We’ve worked with industry-transforming companies such as Salesforce, Workday, and Cloudflare. Now, we are thrilled to partner with Arkestro, and believe the company has immense potential to impact procurement for businesses at global scale.” 

In addition to NEA, other investors in Arkestro’s Series A funding include Construct, Koch Disruptive Technologies, and Crown Industries. 

Byron Knight, COO and Managing Director at Koch Disruptive Technologies,  commented on why he chose to fund Arkestro: 

“We see significant potential for Arkestro and its technology platform in the supply chain; notably in terms of the value it will bring to the procurement market to help enterprises realize increased efficiencies and savings in their operations,” said Byron Knight, COO and Managing Director at Koch Disruptive Technologies. “KDT and Koch Industries have numerous investments and operations across the supply chain, and we’re excited to help Arkestro explore the potential applicability of its solutions.”

Dayna Grayson of Construct Capital added, “Arkestro’s product provides strong savings to corporate procurement departments, and we became extremely excited to be a part of this journey. It’s rare to find a company that solves age old problems at the most important time, in this case, when the supply chain has unpredictable timelines and sometimes runaway prices.”

Our team at Arkestro is also excited about the possibilities Series A funding brings. Our CEO Edmund Zagorin explains why this Series A funding is so critical to Asrkestro’s future growth and why having NEA and Construct as the lead investors are so important:

“With NEA and Construct, Rob and I know our success is backed by the dream team — experienced investors and tireless advocates for capabilities that can help offer dramatic benefits to any enterprise with a spend portfolio that ranges across complex, constrained and fast-moving buying channels — including spend that has eluded influence from traditional user-driven platforms. Our leadership team sees this investment is additional validation for Predictive Procurement Orchestration as a market category and are excited to see so many customers realizing the rapid time-to-value of this imbedded platform that has both AI/ML and a human science approach.” 

Our CTO, Ben Leiken added his thoughts:

“We’re excited to leverage this investment to bring Predictive Procurement Orchestration to many more customers and verticals. As we accelerate our product roadmap and hiring plan in the coming weeks, we’re focused on one thing: realizing our vision even faster.” 

Arkestro Series A – The Future of Procurement is Predictive

Predictive Procurement Orchestration is the future of procurement. Every industry has been dealing with unprecedented supply chain challenges that show no sign of easing. Their procurement teams need to maximize their effectiveness, but they also need to do so in a way with minimal disruption. Arkestro allows companies to leverage the procurement data they already have in their existing systems, using the platform’s AI and its ability to drive automated and augmented processes. The results are deep insights into purchasing information and better decisions—without having to adopt new procurement software for day-to-day use.

Industry statistics support Arkestro’s market opportunity:

• • • 5-10% boost to savings on any enterprise’s addressable spend
    • External validation and improved data quality for every single Purchase Order
    • Unify data for real-time visibility across suppliers, spend and contract terms, including Diversity, ESG, and Supplier Risk

One of the key reasons why the investors chose to fund Arkestro’s Series A is the company’s success to date with leading brands including Bel Brands, Box, and Holman Enterprises. Arkestro, which is targeted at the C-suite and trusted by CFOs and COOs, is helping to boost both savings and supply chain performance – including quality, lead time and on time in full (OTIF) metrics. It offers machine learning-powered predictive pricing, which enables buying teams to better negotiate with and manage more suppliers. In this way, Arkestro helps its customers better manage their supply chains and increase supply chain performance and resiliency to market shocks and inflationary cost pressures. The Arkestro story isn’t just one of potential; it’s one of proof of demand for its product. 

For additional information about Arkestro, procurement trends and issues, customer case studies, and the advantages of adopting the strategy of procurement orchestration, be sure to read the Arkestro blog.