Leverage raises $5m to modernize global supply chains with its leading AI-assisted management platform

NEW YORK, Feb. 8, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Leverage, an emerging global leader in AI-driven supply chain visibility platforms, today announced a $5m investment of growth capital, led by Las Olas Venture Capital, Mark Cuban, Gaingels and Great Oaks.

The latest round of funding adds to $2m already invested in Leverage, proving the organization's track record in disrupting the antiquated global supply chain technology market and providing unprecedented value for its customers. Demand is only increasing, as during the past year Leverage experienced an immense 4000% growth, partly owing to the added disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Founded by Nadav Ullman and Andrew Stroup, Leverage was created in response to the astounding fact that the $9 trillion supply chain and logistics industry still relies on teams of staff to send out emails, PDFs, and Excel spreadsheets to keep track of supply chain data. Harnessing the latest technologies to solve these accumulating supply chain issues, Leverage built a unifying, AI-powered cloud platform to provide supply chain teams with unparalleled purchase order visibility. This allows businesses to radically simplify their operations through one command center.

Supply chain teams typically spend on average between 50% and 80% of their time communicating with their suppliers and freight forwarders over emails and phone calls to track the status of their purchase orders and shipments. By fully automating the end-to-end process of collecting status updates, Leverage produces solutions-focused results, allowing teams to focus their attention towards solving the problems that Leverage detects and surfaces, rather than being bogged down in burdensome manual status checking processes.

Leverage's unique platform provides a single centralized dashboard for users to see the real-time status on any purchase order – whether it be a supplier-side shipment update, as well as demand planning, automating requests for quotes, and receiving notifications if there are any deviations from expectations.

Founders Ullman and Stroup saw first-hand the need for Leverage's platform when they founded the COVID 501(c)3, national non-profit Project N95. Initially a trusted source of verifying PPE manufacturers and suppliers for frontline workers, Project N95 became the national clearinghouse and marketplace for verified and compliant PPE during the height of shortages throughout the US. The organization rapidly grew to over 250 staff members within its first three months and worked in tandem with Andy Slavitt, the White House COVID Task Force, the National Governors Association, Mark Cuban, Amazon's B2B Marketplace, 3M, and many others.

While sourcing, ordering, and distributing millions of units of masks, gowns and gloves, Ullman and Stroup were exposed to the inefficiencies of global supply chains – often leading to purchase orders never being fulfilled or inventory going missing. From these first-hand learnings, Leverage was built to solve this pain point by providing end-to-end supply chain visibility.

Co-founder Nadav Ullman comments: "COVID further exposed how fragile the global supply chain is, to the point that now everyone feels the effect of supply chain issues. The problem is far more than just a few folks being frustrated that their Amazon orders are late. International trade and robust, sustainable supply chains are the glue that keeps nations around the world connected and working together. At Leverage, we're creating sustainable long-term technical solutions to solve these issues at a global scale."

Mark Volchek, Las Olas Venture Capital founding partner says: "The need for modernization in global supply chains is long overdue, and the pandemic has only served to highlight its inefficiencies. Leverage has established themselves as a key disruptor in the area and we are very excited to be leading their current round of funding to take their innovative technology to the next level."

Co-founder Andrew Stroup elaborates: "Through leading Project N95 to help address the national PPE shortage alongside partners such as Andy Slavitt and Mark Cuban, we learned first-hand how unstable the global supply chain is due to lack of visibility and effective cross-border collaboration. Without a modern, technology-driven solution to solve this massive problem, we knew the risk of the next global supply chain crisis could be just around the corner."

Investor Mark Cuban added: "I'm excited to be investing in Leverage. It's clear there's going to be a lot of disruption in the supply chain space, and I'm making the bet that Andrew and Nadav are the ones that are going to make it happen."

Finally, Andy Slavitt, General Partner, TownHall Ventures, former acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and Senior Advisor to the COVID-19 Response Coordinator under the Biden administration concluded: "During the initial onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, I supported Andrew and Nadav as they battled the global supply chain breakdown at Project N95. I'm excited to see how they continue to solve these global issues with Leverage through long-term resiliency and transparency."

Las Olas Venture Capital led the latest round of funding, with participation from Mark Cuban, AI-focused Tensility VC Gaingels, Social Impact Capital, AAPI-focused Hyphen Capital, Great Oaks, Jett McCandless of Project44, Sanish Mondkar former Head of Product at SAP, and ERA's Remarkable Ventures Fund.

Media Contacts

Courtney Glymph
YourStory PR
[email protected]
+44(0)7867488769

About Leverage:
Leverage provides an enterprise software platform to supply chain teams around the world in order to enable unprecedented visibility. Prior to using Leverage, these teams would spend on average 50% of their time calling and emailing their suppliers and freight forwarders to get status updates on their purchase orders and shipments. Leverage fully automates this and seamlessly answers the fundamental question "Where's my stuff?" https://www.tryleverage.ai/

SOURCE Leverage AI