Leverage aims to break through supply chain bottlenecks using AI

Leverage, an artificial intelligence-driven supply chain visibility platform, announced it has raised $5 million in a funding round that includes Las Olas Venture Capital, Great Oaks Venture Capital, the Gaingels investment syndicate and entrepreneur Mark Cuban.

Nadav Ullman, co-founder of Leverage, said the funds will be used to rapidly expand software engineering and customer support teams in order to meet growing demand. 

“International trade and robust, sustainable supply chains are the glue that keeps nations around the world connected and working together,” Ullman said in a statement. “At Leverage, we’re creating sustainable long-term technical solutions to solve these issues at a global scale.”

New York-based Leverage previously raised $2 million in several funding rounds since the company was founded in 2018 by Ullman and Andrew Stroup. The company launched its first product in 2020.

“The need for modernization in global supply chains is long overdue, and the pandemic has only served to highlight its inefficiencies,” Mark Volchek, founding partner of Las Olas Venture Capital, said in a statement. “Leverage has established themselves as a key disruptor in the area.”

Leverage’s cloud-based AI-powered platform was created to help supply chain operators juggling a barrage of PDFs, email attachments and faxes by keeping track of supply chain data, the company said.

The Leverage platform is a single centralized dashboard for users to view the real-time status on any purchase order — including supplier-side shipment updates — as well as demand planning, automating requests for quotes and receiving notifications for any disruptions.

Ullman and Stroup previously founded the COVID-19 nonprofit Project N95, which was used as a source of verifying personal protective equipment manufacturers and suppliers to frontline workers.

Project N95 eventually became the national clearinghouse and marketplace for vetted PPE during the height of shortages throughout the U.S.

“Through leading Project N95 to help address the national PPE shortage, we learned firsthand how unstable the global supply chain is due to lack of visibility and effective cross-border collaboration,” Stroup said. “Without a modern, technology-driven solution to solve this problem, we knew the risk of the next global supply chain crisis could be just around the corner.”

Ullman also previously founded tech startup Dashride, a cloud-based system that lets automotive fleets accept requests, dispatch drivers, track vehicles and bill passengers on one platform. In 2018, Dashride was acquired by autonomous vehicle driving company Cruise GM. 

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