A Swedish startup is bringing its technology to the United States.
Kodiak Hub, a supplier relationship management (SRM) company, revealed Tuesday it had raised $6 million from SaaS venture capital firm Oxx to fuel its expansion.
The company uses artificial intelligence and automation to help companies screen and make informed decisions about their suppliers. That can include information about whether a supplier carries regulatory risks, whether it uses sustainable processes to create products and a variety of other considerations.
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Ashlyn Bohling, chief marketing officer of Kodiak Hub, said, now more than ever, the need exists for such a solution. That’s, in part, because of the head-spinning pace of President Donald Trump’s trade and business-related orders, which are sure to continue.
“As this new administration comes in, there’s a lot of opportunities popping up for us to be [in the U.S.], so we feel very ready,” Bohling told Sourcing Journal, noting that many of the company’s employees originally hail from the U.S.
Kodiak Hub already has information on over 250,000 suppliers globally in more than 20 industries. But it wants to continue to build out that base; Malin Schmidt, its CEO and founder, has a lofty goal: for the company to dwarf its competitors and become the leader in SRM for global companies.
“Our aim is to become what HubSpot is for CRM, so [to] dominate the domain of SRM,” she said.
The company was, in part, spurred by procurement-related issues Schmidt observed in her career as an executive.
“We have so much better apps in our private lives than [when] we step into the office,” she said. “We need to amplify the enterprise space—quick time to value… [and] really intuitive.”
And as time goes on, she noted, the tool only becomes more valuable—particularly because companies have to vet an array of suppliers before determining which is best for business. Today, what works best may not be all about which supplier can provide the lowest price.
“The old truth [was] you want to have fewer suppliers. That’s not the truth anymore. You need lots of different types of supplier ecosystems that you can rely on,” she said. “We are producing supplier profiling so that you can come to an alternative much quicker and faster. It’s this notion that by predicting certain things, we can also give you advice on what you need to do. That type of agility has never been more interesting right now.”
Companies can use specific requirements to screen the suppliers, and each client has different parameters to meet. For instance, a U.S.-only brand may not face the same regulatory environment as a brand in the European Union. That in mind, while a U.S. company might screen suppliers for location based on current tariffs, an EU company might look at a supplier through the lens of the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD).
Kodiak Hub uses automation and AI algorithms to scrape the web and ingest information and data about each supplier a client expresses interest in—and further along in the process, the team asks that supplier to fill in the gaps. Kodiak Hub often incentivizes suppliers providing information, in an effort to create a mutually beneficial relationship, Schmidt said.
“The whole notion behind the company is really that, in order for a deal to work, you need to create long-term value for both parties,” she explained.
Once the company has suppliers’ data, it uses predictive analytics to project how a supplier may perform and to understand how it stacks up against compliance-related issues and risks.
That type of intelligence, when stacked up next to the customer’s specific expectations, can help with decisioning for even the most complex global supply chains. The data about suppliers can be structured or unstructured—meaning that the system can process both hard, numerical data and natural language information, like meeting minutes or non-numerical text from an ESG report to help contextualize the decision.
Schmidt said as data becomes easier to grab hold of, value lies in drawing actionable insights from it.
“Data is just becoming cheaper and cheaper and more accessible. I think the real art is to make sense of it all,” she said.
And that’s exactly what Schmidt plans to spend the $6 million from Oxx Ventures on: refining her company’s ability to work through data. She noted Kodiak Hub is planning to invest in adaptations to its product for the U.S. market, as well as in expanding its data science team. It also plans to invest some of its raise into marketing.
Schmidt said the company will look to grow by 90 to 100 percent this year, while simultaneously growing its net retention revenue. Already, it has three clients in the U.S., and it plans to bring more onto the platform in the coming months.
