Washington, D.C.-based Pendulum has raised $22 million to develop what it calls the “first self-correcting AI platform” for supply chains. The investment includes $11 million in “non-dilutive R&D capital” and $11 million in venture capital from firms including New York-based Decisive Point and Collab Fund, and Blaise Agüera y Arcas, Google’s chief technology officer for Technology & Society. Other backers include Wyoming’s Lowercarbon Capital and Toronto’s Cross Border Impact Ventures.
“Organizations today face the same challenges financial markets overcame with far-reaching algorithms: automated decision-systems that learn from the world and develop new plans at the speed of global change,” said Pendulum founder and CEO Benjamin Thelonious Fels, who was previously a derivatives trader in Chicago and London. His co-founder Suvrit Sra, a MIT professor and expert on AI, is chief scientist at Pendulum.
In an interview to TechCrunch, Fels also touted the environmental benefits of Pendulum’s software. “The single most powerful thing you can do as a retailer to become more sustainable is absolutely nail supply versus demand,” Fels said. “If you know everything you make somebody wants, you are going to dramatically decarbonize your operations, and you are going to increase at massive scale your margins.”
Over a Decade’s R&D
Pendulum emerged from over a decade’s research at Macro-Eyes by Sra, winner of the prestigious Humboldt Prize for AI, and others, as Fels explored the possibility of using knowledge gained from the trading floor for supply and demand predictions. In 2022, Macro-Eyes was rebranded as Pendulum.
Commercial Real Estate
MacKenzie Companies
Advertising / Media / Communications / Public Relations
Nevins & Associates
Financial Services / Investment Firms
Chesapeake Corporate Advisors
Commercial Real Estate
Monday Properties
Venture Capital
Blue Delta Capital Partners
Internet / Technology
Foxtrot Media
Pendulum’s customers range from the maker of Victoria Secret lingerie to national security organizations such as Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) and the Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC), and health organizations in Africa. Pendulum Navigate, for example, helps to avoid GPS becoming the Achilles heel in military operations by using AI and a combination of relative and absolute navigation data to position dismounted users in GPS-denied environments, Pendulum says. The company says it has won two contracts from AFRL’s innovation arm, AFWERX, to, among other things, test Pendulum Navigate on wearables. In Tanzania, Pendulum helped the Gates Foundation improve vaccine availability by better managing supply chains.
Exec Hire
The company also announced the appointment of Element AI co-founder Jean-François Gagné as chief strategy and product officer. Element AI raised investments from Microsoft, Intel and Nvidia before being acquired by ServiceNow for $200 billion. At ServiceNow, Gagné headed AI product management and strategy.
“With JF’s leadership, Pendulum will deliver the platform businesses need to forecast, optimize, and self-adjust across supply and demand, enabling the enterprise to operate with new flexibility and power in this era of volatility and acceleration,” Fels said, refering to Gagne’s hiring.
