project44 announced that it will acquire San Francisco-based ClearMetal, a market leader in international supply chain visibility and predictive analytics for enterprises. ClearMetal’s patented artificial intelligence (AI) enables organizations to optimize their supply chains and provides customers with easy access to trusted, live information about their orders and shipments. project44’s acquisition of ClearMetal is the latest growth milestone preceded by building on tremendous 135% YoY growth, crossing the $50M ARR mark, and being named a Leader in the latest Gartner Magic Quadrant. This acquisition places project44 on the cutting edge of logistics AI, enabling customers to improve agility, and resiliency across their global and multi-modal supply chains.
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“With the addition of ClearMetal’s advanced AI technology and data science team, we’re building on a strong foundation and extending capabilities to deliver more accurate, predictable ETAs and visibility into customer orders and inventory in transit.”
“Project44 has the broadest and deepest visibility network in the world, across all transportation modes,” said Jett McCandless, Founder & CEO, project44. “With the addition of ClearMetal’s advanced AI technology and data science team, we’re building on a strong foundation and extending capabilities to deliver more accurate, predictable ETAs and visibility into customer orders and inventory in transit.”
Over the past 18 months, global supply chains have seen unprecedented levels of disruption. These disruptions have created even more urgency for advanced technology to accurately analyze and track orders and shipments across all modes of transportation, in order to provide customers with the delivery experience they expect. Combined with project44’s leading multi-modal, global network, ClearMetal provides customers with far more granular and deeper visibility earlier on in the lifecycle of an order to predict and act on supply chain disruptions, before they occur. This new functionality includes inventory visibility for shippers and direct integrations with freight forwarders and ocean carriers. As a result, customers can leverage the most accurate end-to-end ETA across all transportation modes, available uniquely from project44.
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The combined platform will deliver value to customers and supply chain partners by:
- Deepening AI based business and market analytics capabilities that translate into intelligent cost savings in the form of reduced buffer stock (15% reduction) and inventory optimization (10-20% reduction)
- Improving demand forecasting and distribution capabilities, providing order and inventory level visibility across shipments, resulting in expedited fee reductions (25-30%)
- Expanding global upstream supplier visibility – particularly into Asia, where manufacturers and freight forwarders play a critical role in the global supply chain
“Now, joined with project44, there’s no question this is the industry’s #1 platform and our combined team, capabilities, and execution deliver remarkable digital transformation for supply chains and the people who rely on them,” said Adam Compain, Founder & CEO of ClearMetal. “ClearMetal’s focus on global manufacturing companies with best-in-class supply chains such as Unilever, Georgia-Pacific, Lenzing and BAT has helped us crack the code on providing upstream international supplier visibility from APAC and LATAM to North America, which is particularly critical given today’s issues with ocean freight. We’re delighted to be part of the project44 team.”
ClearMetal recently partnered with Unilever to build and launch its Virtual Ocean Control Tower. Michelle Grose, Unilever’s Head of Logistics and Fulfilment, said, “We’re transforming our technology backbone to create a highly agile, responsive and end-to-end connected supply chain. This innovation is one piece of that puzzle. It (the control tower) gives us real-time visibility of each step in the process, so we can plan better and respond quicker and, importantly, predict and proactively deal with issues.”
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