o9 Solutions, a leading enterprise AI software platform provider for transforming planning and decision-making speed and quality in companies across industry verticals, today announced that it has received equity investments totaling $295 million from General Atlantic, including BeyondNetZero, its climate investing venture, Generation Investment Management, a pure-play sustainability investment manager, and existing investor KKR. This significant investment will help o9 build on its momentum and accelerate growth for its AI-powered Integrated Business Planning platform it calls the “Digital Brain” across industry verticals and markets. It will also help o9 drive continued innovation in R&D, industry knowledge models and partner ecosystem development that will help companies implement o9’s game-changing platform faster and realize greater value.

Today, leading companies across varied industry verticals that include retail, consumer and industrial products manufacturing, high-tech and semiconductor, life sciences, automotive, telecom, and oil and gas leverage o9’s Digital Brain platform for transforming their supply chain, commercial and integrated business planning capabilities. These companies are using o9’s Digital Brain platform to build a live, digital model of enterprise data and knowledge that helps them detect demand and supply risks and opportunities, forecast demand more accurately, and evaluate what-if scenarios all in real time. By matching demand and supply intelligently and driving greater alignment and collaboration between customers, internal stakeholders and suppliers across the integrated supply chain, clients can realize significant value from their commercial plans and decisions while making measurable positive impact to the environment.

“We have an unprecedented opportunity in front of us,” said Chakri Gottemukkala, Co-founder and CEO of o9. “Demand and supply volatility and complexity has been growing and the pandemic has only accelerated the challenges companies face in meeting customer service and financial goals. At the same time, there is significant pressure on boards and executives from customers and employees to also drive meaningful improvements in sustainability goals. And we believe that o9 is poised perfectly to help companies deal with these mega trends with a differentiated, proven platform.

Executives are increasingly seeing that transforming planning and decision-making capabilities need to be more agile, and integration is the most mission critical, high-value initiative going forward. And because global supply chains are the majority source of environmental impact, we believe transforming planning is key not just for improving P&Ls, but also the health of the planet. The new investments and strategic partnerships with General Atlantic’s BeyondNetZero and Generation Investment Management, along with our established strategic partnership with KKR, will help us accelerate this sacred mission of making the o9 Digital Brain the most value-creating enterprise platform.”

General Atlantic’s BeyondNetZero and Generation Investment Management join KKR as investors in o9, valuing the company at $2.7 billion. This marks an increase from the $1 billion valuation in April 2020 at the time of the company’s first-ever external investment led by KKR, which is also participating in this funding round. This capital raise follows a record year during which the company reported a greater than threefold increase year-over-year in annual recurring revenue (ARR) from new customers.

“Not only is an agile, intelligent and resilient supply chain one of the most important growth accelerators, it also inherently leads to a reduced carbon footprint – especially for organizations that operate on a global scale,” said Sanjiv Sidhu, Chairman and Co-Founder, o9. “A sustainable supply chain requires companies to digitally transform their planning and decision-making capabilities. o9’s Digital Brain platform makes us the partner of choice for companies across the world and we are pleased and honored that General Atlantic’s BeyondNetZero and Generation Investment Management recognize this at such a pivotal phase of our growth trajectory.”

“We believe that o9 is uniquely positioned at the intersection of technology, supply chain, and sustainability,” said Tanzeen Syed, Managing Director, General Atlantic. “The business fits squarely within our theses at General Atlantic and BeyondNetZero to support companies that are leveraging innovation to tackle some of the most pressing issues in the world. o9 helps large organizations transform their costly, complex and resource-intensive supply chains into profitable and environmentally sound models – playing a critical role in enabling them to work toward net zero targets.”

Joy Tuffield, Partner in the Growth Equity strategy at Generation Investment Management, said, “Generation’s brand is predicated on the belief that long-term commercial opportunity is synonymous with sustainable outcomes. We believe the best businesses stand for something significant. Sustainability and supply chain issues have never been more important. o9 is one of the rare companies that we believe can help global enterprises leverage the power of digital technologies to deliver on both imperatives. We are excited by the commitment of o9 to be an enduring company with a positive influence on the world, in both what the company does and how it operates.”

To learn more, contact o9 here.

About o9 Solutions, Inc.

o9 offers a leading AI-powered Planning, Analytics & Data platform called the Digital Brain that helps companies across industry verticals transform traditionally slow and siloed planning into smart, integrated and intelligent planning and decision making across core supply chain, commercial and P&L functions.

With o9’s Digital Brain platform, companies are able to achieve game-changing improvements in quality of data, ability to detect demand and supply risks and opportunities earlier, forecast demand more accurately, evaluate what-if scenarios in real time, match demand and supply intelligently and drive alignment and collaboration across customers, internal stakeholders and suppliers around the integrated supply chain and commercial plans and decisions. Supported by a global ecosystem of partners, o9’s innovative delivery methodology helps companies achieve quick results in customer service, inventory and resource utlilzation and ESG and financial KPIs while building a long-term, sustainable transformation of end-to-end planning and decision-making capabilities. For more information, please visit www.o9solutions.com.

About BeyondNetZero, the Climate Investing Venture of General Atlantic

The BeyondNetZero team seeks to invest in growth companies delivering innovative climate solutions and aims to help them achieve scale. BeyondNetZero looks to identify companies that have the potential to meet and exceed net zero emissions targets, with a focus on decarbonization, energy efficiency, resource conservation and emissions management. BeyondNetZero combines General Atlantic’s growth equity experience with a global team of proven climate investors, advisors and industry executives, including Lord Browne of Madingley, who serves as Chairman of BeyondNetZero. This diverse team of experts brings decades of experience in both addressing climate-focused problems and building pioneering growth companies. For more information on BeyondNetZero, please visit the website: https://beyond-net-zero.com.

General Atlantic is a leading global growth equity firm with more than four decades of experience providing capital and strategic support for over 445 growth companies throughout its history. Established in 1980 to partner with visionary entrepreneurs and deliver lasting impact, the firm combines a collaborative global approach, sector specific expertise, a long-term investment horizon and a deep understanding of growth drivers to partner with great entrepreneurs and management teams to scale innovative businesses around the world. General Atlantic currently has over $86 billion in assets under management inclusive of all products as of September 30, 2021, and more than 215 investment professionals based in New York, Amsterdam, Beijing, Hong Kong, Jakarta, London, Mexico City, Mumbai, Munich, Palo Alto, São Paulo, Shanghai, Singapore and Stamford. For more information on General Atlantic, please visit the website: www.generalatlantic.com.

About Generation Investment Management 

Generation Investment Management LLP is dedicated to long-term investing, integrated sustainability research and client alignment. It is an independent, private, owner-managed partnership established in 2004 and headquartered in London, with a U.S. office in San Francisco. Generation Investment Management LLP is authorised and regulated in the United Kingdom by the Financial Conduct Authority. www.generationim.com.

Pixis (formerly known as Pyxis One), a leading provider of contextual codeless AI infrastructure for complete marketing optimization, today announced it has secured US $100M in Series C funding. Pixis will leverage the fresh funds to help the company rapidly scale its AI platforms and plugins, as well as accelerate expansions across North America, Europe, and APAC.

The Series C round was led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, with participation from new investor General Atlantic, a leading global growth equity firm. Existing investors Celesta, Premji Invest, Chiratae Ventures, and Crimsonox Ventures also participated in the round. With the close of its US $17M Series B round just four months prior, Pixis has raised a total of US $124M to date since its founding in 2018.

Pixis’ AI infrastructure, which leverages self-evolving neural networks, is providing immense value to customers through its codeless AI plugin, enabling AI-powered decision-making for every aspect of marketing. Pixis recently launched its codeless AI plugin after closing, with the belief that a powerful codeless AI infrastructure will help safeguard marketers against inevitable developments that will change the current marketing ecosystem. Looking ahead, Pixis aims to add over 200 customizable self-evolving AI models to the infrastructure it offers and has already introduced close to four dozen AI models since its last funding.

Pixis currently has over 100 customers using its AI products across the world. Customers using the Pixis AI infrastructure have witnessed a 20% decrease in acquisition costs on average, in addition to at least 300 hours of manual work saved per month.

“The web going cookieless, in conjunction with decreasing access to the depth of data that was previously available, is a worrisome situation for marketers. In this environment, it is self-evolving neural networks that are proving to be invaluable assets in countering the disruptions to the marketing landscape,” explained Shubham A. Mishra, co-founder and Global CEO at Pixis. “We are excited to partner with SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and General Atlantic to make codeless AI infrastructure accessible to every market in the world.”

Shantanu Rastogi, Managing Director at General Atlantic, continued, “Pixis is disrupting the marketing space with a self-learning codeless AI infrastructure that serves a mission-critical function in the marketing tech stack. The AI plugins and platforms solve key customer problems and are improving business outcomes. The Pixis platform demonstrates the power of global entrepreneurship, and we are proud to support the team’s ambitions of continued expansion.”

SoftBank Vision Fund 2’s investment in Pixis confirms that in a cookieless world, Artificial Intelligence could be the big differentiating factor for brands. “Marketing is one of the largest spend categories for companies but many of its decisions are still driven by intuition rather than data,” said Priya Saiprasad, Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers. “Pixis has developed an AI-enabled, end-to-end digital marketing solution that equips teams with cutting-edge data science to automate and improve core processes, from budget allocation to real-time campaign optimization and reporting. We are excited to partner with Shubham and the team to support their mission to make marketing data-backed, intelligent, agile, and effortlessly scalable in the new cookie-less world.”

About Pixis (formerly Pyxis One)

Pixis is a California-based technology company that provides codeless AI infrastructure to enable customers to scale accurate data-driven marketing. The company’s codeless AI infrastructure currently comprises over four-dozen proprietary AI models that are deployed across an ecosystem of products and plugins. Pixis is on a mission to provide marketers with robust plug-and-play AI products without them having to write a single line of code.

About General Atlantic

General Atlantic is a leading global growth equity firm with more than four decades of experience providing capital and strategic support for over 445 growth companies throughout its history. Established in 1980 to partner with visionary entrepreneurs and deliver lasting impact, the firm combines a collaborative global approach, sector-specific expertise, a long-term investment horizon, and a deep understanding of growth drivers to partner with great entrepreneurs and management teams to scale innovative businesses around the world. General Atlantic currently has over $86 billion in assets under management inclusive of all products as of September 30, 2021, and more than 215 investment professionals based in New York, Amsterdam, Beijing, Hong Kong, Jakarta, London, Mexico City, Mumbai, Munich, Palo Alto, São Paulo, Shanghai, Singapore, and Stamford. For more information on General Atlantic, please visit the website: www.generalatlantic.com.