Supply chain network design, planning and analytics technology provider Llamasoft today announced the acquisition of Opex Analytics LLC, a Chicago based provider of artificial intelligence-based applications for Fortune 500 companies.
According to the announcement, the acquisition creates a combined company that will offer productized applications to global organizations to accelerate adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) with deep expertise in machine learning (ML), optimization
, simulation and other advanced analytics capabilities.
Opex Analytics will continue to operate under the Opex Analytics brand, now as a LLamasoft Company.
No financial information was disclosed regarding this acquisition other than the backing of TPG Capital, Goldman Sachs, and MK Capital.
Founded in 2013, Opex Analytics was conceived to address the untapped opportunity for applying the combination of operations research and AI technologies to bring a new level of solutions to operational problems. The company reportedly employs upwards of 140 data scientists, operational experts, and development resources located in either the United States, Russia and India. With a co-innovation approach, the company has developed and deployed multiple applications for large, global corporations in areas ranging from operational predictions, dynamic pricing, incident prevention, employee retention to optimizing consumer experiences.
Razat Gaurav will lead the combined company as the CEO of LLamasoft. Mike Watson and Ganesh Ramakrishna will co-lead the Opex Analytics business unit within LLamasoft.
Co-founder and partner Mike Watson provides 20 plus years of experience leading global business teams at former supply chain network design technology provider LogicTools, and later ILOG and IBM. Llamasoft eventually acquired the technology elements of LogicTools from IBM in 2015. Watson further serves as an adjunct professor within the master’s in engineering management and masters in analytics programs at Northwestern University. Co-Founder and Partner Ganesh Ramakrishna has worked in several global leadership roles at ILOG and IBM and has traveled extensively and led high-impact analytics projects within enterprises across the Americas, Asia and Europe.
One of the interesting potentials of this acquisition are indications that LLamasoft’s portfolio of existing optimization, simulation and machine learning algorithmic solvers will be enhanced with the addition of Opex Analytics artificial intelligence capabilities, accelerating the deployment of enterprise-scale, applied AI applications to global corporations. Further implied is the integration of LLamasoft’s applied research team with the over 100 data scientists at, offering both companies’ customers access to an unmatched knowledge and Opex Analytics now a co-innovation resource base that is more globally dispersed including Russia and India.
This devlopment follows the August announcement of Llamasoft’s strategic partnership with China based JD Logistics the logistics business arm of China’s online retail platform JD.com. That multi-year partnership included essentially most elements of Llamasoft Supply Chain Guru Applications Suite including many of its supply chain analytics, supply chain network design optimization, planning, operations and management being offered to JD Logistics with an added segmented sales model that includes JD Logistics acting as a reseller of bundled software applications and some managed services among its associated customer base across China.
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Market Implications
Supply Chain Matters will provide a more in-depth perspective regarding this announced LLamasoft acquisition at a later point.
Suffice to note that this announcement further reflects on the ongoing market trending of more and more supply chain planning, analytics technology, and response management technology providers leveraging their application of AI and machine-learning to solve existing supply chain management business process challenges, or direct entry into the supply chain segment from former enterprise level AI optimization plays.
Bob Ferrari
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