Supply chains are messy. San Francisco-based startup Loop isn’t content helping companies merely clean up their supply chains. Instead, the startup is using AI to offer companies predictive, and even prescriptive, remedies — almost like an ideal healthcare provider.
“I do an annual checkup, and it’s like, oh I should be walking more,” Loop co-founder and CTO Shaosu Liu said in an interview. “But that’s not the end goal, right? The end goal is someone teaching me about nutrition, someone teaching me about longevity.”
The approach helped Loop secure a $95 million in a Series C funding round from some high-powered Silicon Valley backers, the company announced Friday. The round was led by Valor Equity Partners and the Valor Atreides AI Fund, and includes investments from 8VC, Founders Fund, Index Ventures, and J.P. Morgan’s late-stage fund, Growth Equity Partners.
The funding comes at a time when engineering talent is one of the hottest commodities in tech. Both Liu and his co-founder (and CEO) Matt McKinney — who met while working at Uber — said they will deploy a lot of that capital towards hiring.
But it’s also a volatile moment for any company with a global supply chain, and that has helped drive investment into startups that are using AI to adapt.
Deliverr founder Harish Abbott raised a $85 million Series A round late last year to help automate work done by freight shippers and carriers. A startup founded by former Google and Linkedin Engineers called Amari AI came out of stealth in February with the goal of helping customs brokers modernize their out-of-date systems. And entrenched players like Uber Freight and Flexport are making big AI pushes as well. (Ryan Petersen, Flexport founder and CEO, is an early investor in Loop.)
Loop’s pitch is fairly straightforward. The company helps its custome …