ANN ARBOR—LLamasoft, the Ann Arbor-based developer of supply chain simulation and design software, announced that it had acquired Opex Analytics LLC, a Chicago-based provider of artificial intelligence services to Fortune 500 companies.
The acquisition, backed by TPG Capital, Goldman Sachs, and MK Capital, creates a combined company that will offer products and services to accelerate adoption of artificial intelligence, with expertise in machine learning, optimization, simulation, and other advanced analytics capabilities to improve decision making.
Opex Analytics will continue to operate under its current brand.
Opex has enabled large companies to use new data sources together with AI techniques to create breakthrough insights, detect and predict business performance, and perform root cause analysis, leading to better and more profitable decisions. Opex Analytics employs more than 140 data scientists, operational experts, and development resources in the United States, Russia and India. Opex Analytics customers include well known global brands in the consumer-packaged goods, retail, transportation, manufacturing, finance, and food services industries.
LLamasoft officials said the company’s portfolio of existing optimization, simulation and machine learning algorithmic solvers will be enhanced with the addition of Opex Analytics artificial intelligence capabilities, accelerating the deployment of AI applications to global corporations.
Last year, LLamasoft launched its first artificial intelligence and machine learning application for demand forecasting ,achieving significant double-digit gains in forecast accuracy. The acquisition provides a mechanism to combine both firms’ AI expertise to more accurately model and predict demand over short- and long-term time horizons.
“The acquisition of Opex Analytics supports our strategy to transform the future of enterprise decision making,” said Razat Gaurav, CEO of LLamasoft. “The teams at LLamasoft and Opex are known for leveraging data and the power of AI to gain deep insights and solve complex problems for companies who battle a barrage of constantly changing market conditions and ever-evolving customer demands. The combination of our enterprise-grade analytics platform and our unmatched team of seasoned data scientists with simulation, optimization and machine learning expertise will uniquely position us to unlock the value potential of AI for our customers.”
“We see this as an opportunity to accelerate value creation for an even broader community of customers,” said Ganesh Ramakrishna, co-founder of Opex. “Over the last several years, Opex has been building the capability to bring production AI solutions to our clients and enable them to rethink their businesses with insights from AI.”
“With this combined firm, we’ll have additional assets and execution ability to bring solutions to the broader market at a time when many organizations are struggling to demonstrate progress on transformation initiatives,” said Michael Watson, co-founder of Opex.
Gaurav will lead the combined company as the CEO of LLamasoft. Watson and Ramakrishna will co-lead the Opex Analytics business unit within LLamasoft. TPG Capital, Goldman Sachs, and MK Capital will continue to be active partners to the combined company.
More than 750 companies in a wide variety of industries use LLamasoft to answer complex supply chain questions. Its customers have identified more than $13 billion in value as a result. To reach its goal to positively impact 100 million lives by 2022, LLamasoft has also partnered with humanitarian organizations, government entities, and the World Economic Forum to use LLamasoft technology to design and optimize health supply chains, increasing overall efficiency and reaching more individuals in need.