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Dallas, TX – April 28, 2020 – o9 Solutions, Inc. (“o9”) today announced a minority equity investment from KKR that values the company at over a billion dollars. o9’s AI-powered Integrated Business Planning platform helps leading global enterprises drive digital transformation and has grown annual recurring revenue by more than 100% in the last year. This first external capital raise in o9’s history will accelerate the go-to-market initiatives for its next-generation technology across industry verticals and global markets.
Today the o9 platform is powering the planning and operations for large enterprise clients in many industry verticals, including retail, consumer goods, apparel, consumer electronics, industrial manufacturing, and oil & gas. These customers use o9’s cloud platform to create next generation planning capabilities that:
- Create improved visibility into drivers of demand;
- Improve quality of forecasts using AI models;
- Evaluate different commercial actions to close gaps to plan;
- Provide better real-time visibility into risks and opportunities across extended global supply chains;
- Match demand and supply using intelligent algorithms;
- Drive rapid what-if scenario planning to evaluate P&L impacts of different decision choices; and
- Drive plans into execution through digital engagement with customers, suppliers and internal operations.
- All these capabilities are driven off a single platform and code base thus enabling efficient and rapid value delivery for clients.
“The capabilities offered by the o9 platform are now increasingly mission critical for any global company”, said Sanjiv Sidhu, o9 Chairman and Co-Founder.
Jake Heller, Co-head of KKR’s Technology Growth team in the Americas, said: “Sanjiv and Chakri are industry pioneers who have built a best-in-class team and technology platform with category defining potential. Whether you look at trends in e-commerce and digitization, rapidly changing consumer habits, or the heightened uncertainty in the world today, all indicators point to the vital importance of faster, smarter and more dynamic planning capabilities for managing global supply chains and operations. We look forward to working closely alongside the o9 team to continue building on the company’s tremendous momentum.”
Jimmy Miele, Principal at KKR, said: “As we evaluated this investment and spoke to industry participants, what stood out is o9’s reputation for innovation and excellence in execution, as well as the strong endorsements of their technology by blue-chip clients. We are excited to back this team of proven supply chain planning industry pioneers as they scale and enhance their next-generation platform.”
KKR is making its investment in o9 primarily from its KKR Next Generation Technology Growth Fund II. Mizuho Securities USA acted as exclusive Financial Advisor to KKR.
About KKR
KKR is a leading global investment firm that manages multiple alternative asset classes, including private equity, energy, infrastructure, real estate and credit, with strategic partners that manage hedge funds. KKR aims to generate attractive investment returns for its fund investors by following a patient and disciplined investment approach, employing world-class people, and driving growth and value creation with KKR portfolio companies. KKR invests its own capital alongside the capital it manages for fund investors and provides financing solutions and investment opportunities through its capital markets business. References to KKR’s investments may include the activities of its sponsored funds. For additional information about KKR & Co. Inc. (NYSE: KKR), please visit KKR’s website at www.kkr.com and on Twitter @KKR_Co.
Contacts
o9 Solutions General Inquires
+1 (214) 838-3125
[email protected]
Media
Kristi Huller or Miles Radcliffe-Trenner
Tel: + 1 (212) 750-8300
[email protected]
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About the authors
o9
The Digital Brain Platform
o9 Solutions is a leading Enterprise Knowledge and AI-powered platform helping companies build Agile, Adaptive & Autonomous Planning & Execution Models for transforming enterprise decision-making in environments of rising volatility and uncertainty. Whether it is improving forecast accuracy, matching demand and supply and driving collaboration across the multi-tier supply chain to improve resilience at optimal costs and inventory, or optimizing new product and commercial initiatives to drive revenue growth and margins, decision-making processes from long-range to tactical to execution horizon can be made faster and smarter and connected on o9’s Digital Brain Platform.
o9 brings together game-changing technology innovations — such as innovative enterprise knowledge graph modeling, big data analytics, advanced algorithms for forecasting, demand/supply balancing, scenario planning, real time learning, collaboration, generative and agentic AI, easy-to-use interfaces and cloud-based delivery, and innovative management methods — as well as organization, process and change management best practices to transform decision-making speed and intelligence.
