This week, it was announced that SWARM Engineering–an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered platform designed for global agriculture supply chain logistics–has successfully closed a $2.7 million seed round. Chicago’s S2G Ventures, a multi-stage venture investment firm focused on food, agriculture, oceans and seafood markets, led the seed round. Other participants included Serra Ventures, investing via their new AgTech fund, Harvard Business School Alumni, Wells Street Capital, the Virginia Tech Carilion (VTC) Innovation Fund, and Rinvest. Angel investor and former CEO of agribusiness giant Bunge, Soren Schroder, also invested.
The venture capital round will support SWARM’s ongoing technological innovation and team growth as it serves an expanding list of customers, ranging from growers through to dedicated logistics firms.
SWARM Engineering is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform specifically for the food supply chain, which aims to rapidly solve complex problems such as supply and demand forecasting, optimizing inbound and outbound logistics, or maximizing yield in controlled environment agriculture. SWARM is a “no-code” solution, so end users do not need data science expertise, knowledge of machine learning, or a degree in math to use the software. Business users simply define their problem, and SWARM matches their definition with a curated library of algorithms (which can be added to by customers or 3rd parties) to rapidly deliver a solution via the cloud.
SWARM are anticipating continued growth in agriculture data, combined with an ongoing scarcity of data scientists, especially those with agricultural expertise. They aim to simplify the use of AI and advanced Machine Learning in the food supply chain, so that organizations can reap the rewards of the huge advances being made, at affordable price points, using existing team members’ skills and knowledge.
“I’m excited to have the capital to continue SWARM’s exciting journey in solving real-world problems for food supply chain organizations, but I’m even more thrilled to be partnering with investors who are so knowledgeable and committed to this space,” SWARM founder and CEO Anthony Howcroft said.
“The global pandemic has highlighted the critical importance of supply chains, and food has frequently made headlines – in many cases, for all the wrong reasons; who can forget seeing dramatic images of milk being poured away because of logistical challenges? “In the next few years, we have a tremendous opportunity to make a step change in efficiency and sustainability in food production and transportation. We need to give the right tools to the people at the heart of the food supply chain to help them deliver this transformation,” he added.
Use cases
Use cases for SWARM Engineering include truck load planning to balance freight loads and route distances (SWARM notes that proper load balancing can make a difference of 10-30 percent in total transportation costs for an agriculture firm); cloud-based blending calculations for intermediate product mixing (in machine learning parlance this is known as “combinatorial learning”–generating different combinations out of large data-sets–but in food supply chain logistics it can help producers determine appropriate “blends” of raw materials for food production; and, finally, dynamic optimization of shipping container flow.
“COVID-19 exposed the fragility of our food system, in particular the food supply chain, resulting in impacts to farmers, producers, food businesses and ultimately consumers. We are excited to lead SWARM Engineering’s seed round and support them as they help food and agriculture companies solve these increasingly complex supply chain challenges in a scalable way,” said S2G Ventures Chief Investment Officer and Managing Director, Sanjeev Krishnan.
“The Ag-Food supply chain is all about optimization and prediction,” said former Bunge CEO Soren Schroeder. “Often the biggest challenge is to define a problem very precisely. SWARM can help companies – large and small – define and solve very complex problems quickly, using the latest in data technology.”
