Dave Clark, formerly of Amazon and Flexport, just raised $100 million for a new supply chain company

Dave Clark has had a roller coaster ride over the last two years.

After stepping down as CEO of Amazon's global consumer division in June 2022 – a position he held for over two decades – Clark moved to Dallas to join supply chain logistics company Flexport. With the board's mandate to prepare Flexport for an IPO, Clark served as co-CEO and later CEO, while founder Ryan Peterson moved to chairman of the board.

But not everything went smoothly. In September 2023, Flexport's board, led by Peterson, pressured Clark to resign, accusing him of mismanagement. Clark claimed he was only trying to solve what he saw as “extensive” organizational problems. Later reports confirmed Clark's claims, but the damage was done. Clark was outside.

Clark considered a gubernatorial run in Texas; He also hired strategists. But the appeal of starting a business – one he could run as he saw fit – proved greater.

Clark unveiled his new company Auger on Tuesday, raising a massive $100 million seed round led by VC firm Oak HC/FT. Auger is developing an AI-powered tool for supply chain-dependent businesses that integrates with existing inventory management platforms to provide real-time insights.

“Throughout my career, I have seen firsthand how disrupted supply chains impact not just businesses, but actually millions of people: delays that prevent products from reaching shelves, miscommunications that force employees to work overtime, higher consumer prices, etc. inefficiencies that contribute to a growing carbon footprint,” Clark told TechCrunch. “These are not just business problems – they are human problems. And it’s time we fix them.”

Clark wasn't sure what Exactly Auger is building, in addition to “unifying” supply chain data for different types of aggregation. There also appears to be a chatbot component: Clark says users can “simply” ask questions like “Give me inventory information for next week's delivery,” and Auger will provide that data “instantly” in a “consumer-grade” manner. Portal.

“Despite heavy investments, companies still rely on fragmented 'franchise software' – disjointed systems composed of incompatible technologies that do not communicate effectively,” said Clark. “This leads to inefficient workarounds and forces key decisions to be made using tools like Excel that were never designed to handle the complexity of supply chains of this scale.” Auger is creating a new solution for companies seeking better options.”

Clark says there is strong demand for technology to help companies understand their supply chains. According to one source, 56% of retailers have weeks of “safety stockpiles” to protect themselves against losses in supply chain visibility.

The lack of supply chain awareness – combined with increasing supply chain headwinds, from dock worker strikes to unrest in the Red Sea – is contributing to significant disruptions in global shipping. About a third of service companies and nearly half of manufacturers are having difficulty receiving supplies, according to a survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

“Increasing disruption and global conflict are driving near-constant changes in global manufacturing and the flow of goods, stretching existing technology beyond its limits,” Clark said.

Recent hurdles, combined with the challenges posed by the pandemic, have led to an explosion in the number of startups focused on supply chain visibility and management. According to Markets and Markets, the logistics software sector is on track to reach $46.5 billion by 2025. And funding is flowing well to emerging supply chain platform providers – startups in this space received $15.4 billion in investments this year.

In fact, Auger, based in Bellevue, Washington, is entering a market full of formidable competitors.

Altana, which raised $200 million from investors in July, uses an AI system to create a common view of international supply chain networks, drawing on both logistics and B2B data. Everstream and Pando offer their own analytics dashboards designed to complement transportation management and supplier relationship management systems.

Clark claims that what Auger does will be truly different.

“Auger will integrate data from multiple sources and leverage advanced AI and machine learning to generate automated, dynamic insights in real time,” Clark said. “The platform provides a centralized view of planning, forecasting and financing (to)…enable teams to move beyond manual tasks and focus on driving innovation.”

Clark could well have what it takes to compete with the larger players in the SaaS supply chain software space. logistics Is after all, his specialty. At Amazon, Clark was an early proponent of robotic automation, which saved the company tens of millions of dollars. And during the pandemic, Clark dramatically expanded Amazon's operations to meet increased demand for online goods.

On the other hand, Clark has made major management missteps. He misjudged the response to Amazon's brick-and-mortar stores and over-expanded the company's warehouse capacity in the final phase of the pandemic. The latter decision led to billions of dollars in cost overruns.

Oak General Partner Matt Streisfeld has confidence in Clark, calling him a “unique” founder with the potential to “reimagine supply chain management software.”

“We are in the midst of a critical transformation as more data moves to the cloud every day,” Streisfeld said in a statement. “With this shift, we will have more accessible information that can be structured not only for continuous real-time planning, but also so that AI can be integrated to automate more workflows and provide more business and financial insights for inventory management and to provide forecasts.”

Clark says Auger, which has not yet acquired any customers or generated revenue, will release more information about its product roadmap and milestones in the coming months. “Our founding team is comprised of tireless problem solvers with a proven track record of delivering transformative supply chain solutions at scale,” he added. “This is just the beginning.”