Proven software finance leader joins as Wiser advances its AI-powered competitive intelligence platform and pursues ambitious growth strategy

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 21, 2026 — Wiser Solutions, a leading competitive intelligence platform trusted by brands and retailers globally, today announced the appointment of Rick Buffington as Chief Financial Officer. Buffington joins Wiser at a pivotal point in the company’s evolution, following a comprehensive business transformation that has strengthened its operating foundation and positioned the company to pursue a new phase of growth, innovation and market leadership.

Buffington brings extensive financial and operational leadership experience across enterprise software and technology companies. Most recently, he served in a senior finance leadership role at MultiTracks.com, where he helped guide the business through a period of change and significant expansion. His previous experience includes leadership roles at Accruent and Community Brands, where he developed deep expertise in scaling software businesses, building high-performing finance organizations and driving operational performance.

“We’ve fundamentally transformed Wiser over the past year, and we’re entering our next chapter with a much stronger foundation and a clear ambition to lead the evolution of competitive intelligence,” said Michael Richards, Chief Executive Officer of Wiser Solutions. “The opportunity ahead is significant. Advances in AI are changing what’s possible in how competitive data is collected, connected and turned into actionable intelligence, and Wiser is exceptionally well positioned to capitalize on that shift. Rick has proven he can help scale recurring revenue businesses while building the financial and operational discipline needed to sustain that growth. He’s exactly the kind of leader we want helping shape and execute our strategy.”

Wiser is accelerating the development of its next-generation competitive intelligence platform by combining its extensive global data infrastructure with increasingly sophisticated AI capabilities. The company is fundamentally changing how competitive information is collected and delivered, enabling brands and retailers to respond faster to market developments and make better commercial decisions. With a more efficient operating model and a sharper strategic focus, Wiser is positioned to capitalize on growing demand for accurate, actionable competitive intelligence at scale.

“Wiser has a tremendous opportunity to redefine how brands and retailers use competitive intelligence to drive business performance,” said Buffington. “The company has made significant progress in building a more focused and scalable business, and its combination of data assets, technology and customer relationships creates a powerful foundation for growth. I’m excited to partner with Mike and the leadership team to realize that potential and build a business that delivers sustained value to customers and stakeholders.”

As CFO, Buffington will lead Wiser’s global finance organization and serve as a key strategic partner to the CEO and executive leadership team. His priorities will include strengthening financial and operational performance, supporting strategic investments in technology and go-to-market capabilities, and building the financial infrastructure to support Wiser’s long-term growth ambitions.

About Wiser Solutions

Wiser is the competitive intelligence platform brands and retailers trust to win more sales, starting where it matters most: Price. Its intelligence spans pricing, promotions, shipping, availability, ratings, reviews and market execution, giving customers a comprehensive view of the competitive landscape and the tools to act with confidence. Powered by advanced AI and a global data infrastructure, Wiser helps businesses make smarter decisions, respond faster to market changes and deliver stronger commercial outcomes.

For more information, visit www.wiser.com.

SOURCE Wiser Solutions, Inc.

Company’s ARR grew 17x since January, with more than 10,000 startups and enterprise companies running builds and tests on its platform.

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 21, 2026 — Blacksmith, the infrastructure platform for building and testing code, today announced a $66M Series C led by Sequoia Capital at a $1 billion valuation, with participation from Premji Invest and existing investors Peak XV Partners, GV and Y Combinator. The round brings Blacksmith’s total funding to $125 million and will enable the company to grow its team and expand its compute footprint.

For years, writing code was the slow part of shipping software. With AI coding agents now producing a large and growing share of the world’s code, the burden has changed from writing code to validating it. Every change still has to be built and tested before it can be merged, a step known as continuous integration, or CI.

Most companies run CI on general-purpose cloud infrastructure that was never designed for it. As developers push more code, teams hit longer waits for compute, slower builds on older-generation CPUs, and a constant fight between over- and under-provisioning. Anthropic reported last month that its own CI volume grew 25x in six months as Claude took over most of its code output.

“Since Claude Code took off in March, almost every conversation we’ve had with a large engineering team has started the same way. Developers who used to push three or four pull requests a day are now pushing orders of magnitude more and their CI infrastructure can’t keep up. We’re grateful to our customers who are trusting us to solve this bottleneck, and excited to partner with Sequoia to solve it at scale,” said Aditya “JP” Jayaprakash, co-founder and CEO of Blacksmith.

CI is the most variable workload a company runs: a single customer’s demand regularly jumps from zero to tens of thousands of CPUs and back again. Blacksmith has designed every part of its infrastructure stack to absorb those spikes as a matter of routine. Customers switch with a one-line change to their workflow file and never provision, scale or maintain their CI infrastructure again. Developers using Blacksmith see their CI jobs complete twice as fast and at 60% lower cost on average, with zero operational overhead. Since January, the number of CI jobs running on Blacksmith each week has grown from 5 million to more than 90 million, and annual recurring revenue has grown 17x.

“JP and team understood early that as AI agents wrote more code, the infrastructure to build and test it would need to change,” said Isaiah Boone, Partner at Sequoia Capital. “What stood out to us was their deep systems expertise and speed of execution. That has translated into a product that helps their customers test and ship their software faster. We believe that foundation gives Blacksmith room to build much more as the demands of software development change.”

Blacksmith was founded in 2024 by Jayaprakash, Aayush Shah and Aditya Maru, who met as undergraduates at the University of Waterloo. Shah and Maru were early engineers at Cockroach Labs, and Jayaprakash was an engineer at Faire. All three are developers who have run spiky, large-scale infrastructure before, and they built Blacksmith on the bet that testing code, not writing it, would become the constraint on shipping software.

More than 10,000 companies, including Ashby, Granola, Handshake and LangChain, now run their CI on Blacksmith. The company manages nearly 10 MW of compute across data centers in the United States and Europe and is on track to grow that footprint at least 5x in 2027.

“Blacksmith has significantly reduced the burden of managing our CI runners while cutting our runner costs by roughly 40%, and that doesn’t even account for the engineering time we’ve saved,” said Joaquin Borggio, Infrastructure Engineer at LangChain.

To learn more or move your CI to Blacksmith, visit blacksmith.sh. Blacksmith is hiring engineers in New York and San Francisco at blacksmith.sh/careers. Follow Blacksmith on LinkedIn and X.

About Blacksmith

Blacksmith is the infrastructure platform for building and testing code. Companies bring Blacksmith their builds and tests, and Blacksmith runs them twice as fast and at 60% lower cost on average, on infrastructure purpose-built for CI workloads. More than 10,000 companies, including Ashby, Granola, Handshake and LangChain, run their CI on Blacksmith. The company was founded in 2024 by Aditya (JP) Jayaprakash, Aayush Shah and Aditya Maru and is backed by Sequoia Capital, Premji Invest, Peak XV Partners, GV and Y Combinator. For more information, visit blacksmith.sh.

SOURCE Blacksmith

Northwind’s new flagship real estate credit fund doubles its $500 million target while adding new institutional investors amid strong demand for durable, income-oriented real estate credit

NEW YORK, Oct. 21, 2026 — Northwind Group (“Northwind”), a New York-based real estate private equity and debt fund manager, today announced the final close of Northwind Debt Fund III (“NDF III” or the “Fund”) with $1 billion in committed capital, doubling its $500 million target and making it the largest fund in Northwind’s history.

NDF III continues Northwind’s flagship real estate credit strategy, which the firm launched in 2017. The Fund primarily originates senior-secured bridge loans across major U.S. gateway markets, with a focus on acquisition, bridge, condo inventory, construction, office-to-residential conversions, pre-development, lease-up and other specialized financing solutions.

The successful capital raise reflects the depth of Northwind’s existing investor base and its growing institutional presence. Many of Northwind’s longstanding investors returned to NDF III with increased commitments, and the Fund welcomed a significant number of new institutional investors. NDF III’s investor base includes leading pension funds, insurance companies, banks, family offices and ultra-high-net-worth individuals, both domestic and international. NDF III is designed to generate consistent current income for investors through senior-secured floating-rate loans structured to prioritize capital preservation and backed by high-quality real estate and sponsors in supply-constrained markets.

The strength of the raise also reflects investors’ growing appetite for durable, asset-backed credit strategies with strong downside protection. As banks continue to pull back from transitional, construction and bridge lending amid heightened regulatory capital requirements and balance sheet constraints, borrowers are increasingly turning to private lenders that can provide reliable capital and certainty of execution. Northwind views this shift as structural rather than cyclical and expects demand for its lending solutions to remain strong for years to come.

NDF III is Northwind’s third real estate debt fund and fifth credit fund overall, building on the successful deployment of its predecessor funds and a track record of more than $11 billion in transaction volume across all Northwind vehicles. Since holding its first close in January 2025, the Fund has already originated $1.5 billion in loans across markets including New York City, South Florida, Los Angeles and Chicago. Notable investments include: (i) a $401 million senior completion-to-condo inventory loan for the Ritz-Carlton-branded residences in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, (ii) a $208 million first mortgage construction loan for an office-to-residential conversion in Downtown Brooklyn, (iii) a $180 million acquisition loan, including a future good-news funding facility, secured by a 55-story, Class A office tower with 1,700 parking spaces in the Bunker Hill submarket of Los Angeles, and (iv) a $98 million senior loan for the acquisition and pre-development of an existing condominium building in the South Beach submarket of Miami Beach, Florida, which will ultimately be demolished and redeveloped into a 100-unit luxury residential condo building.

“The final close of NDF III is a defining milestone for Northwind and a strong endorsement of our growing credit platform,” said Ran Eliasaf, Founder and Managing Partner of Northwind Group. “We are grateful to our longstanding investors for their continued support and proud to welcome a new group of partners. I’m especially proud that we completed this capital raise entirely in-house, without the use of a third-party placement agent. We believe the current environment presents one of the most attractive lending opportunities we have seen, and NDF III positions us to capitalize on it on a greater scale than ever before. Sponsors increasingly look to Northwind as a dependable source of capital, and NDF III allows us to meet that demand while staying true to our disciplined investment philosophy. Our ability to underwrite complex situations, from condo inventory to office-to-residential conversions, and to close with speed and certainty is what continues to set us apart.”

“Demand for flexible, reliable bridge capital remains strong in New York City and other supply-constrained markets across the U.S., as sponsors navigate a shifting interest rate environment and a wave of upcoming loan maturities,” said Michael Ainbinder, Partner and Head of Commercial Real Estate Credit at Northwind Group. “The market dislocation we’ve seen over the past several years has fundamentally changed the role private lenders play in commercial real estate finance. With NDF III, we have greater capacity to step into that gap, support high-quality sponsors and capitalize on opportunities where complexity and speed matter. We believe this is an especially compelling time to be deploying capital in real estate credit.”

About Northwind Group
Founded in 2008 by Ran Eliasaf, Northwind Group is a New York-based real estate private equity and credit fund manager. In 2017, Northwind launched its real estate credit platform, providing senior bridge financing secured by residential and commercial properties in major U.S. gateway markets. Through its healthcare credit platform, Northwind provides structured financing and bridge-to-HUD loans secured by income-producing portfolios of skilled nursing and senior living properties. Across its strategies, Northwind has transacted on more than $11 billion in real estate debt and equity investments. For more information, visit www.northwind-group.com.

Media Contact
5WPR for Northwind Group
[email protected]

This press release is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any interest in any fund managed by Northwind Group or its affiliates.

SOURCE Northwind Group

The fresh capital comes at a pivotal moment for venture. Companies are staying private longer, and more of their value is being created before the public markets ever see it. Meanwhile, AI is accelerating innovation, helping create a new generation of high-growth technology companies that are reaching significant scale while remaining private. Capital is also concentrating at the very top of venture. According to the Q2 2026 PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor, just three firms accounted for nearly half of all venture capital raised in the first half of 2026. As capital concentrates among a relatively small number of firms, access becomes increasingly difficult to earn, and Vintage has spent more than two decades earning its place within that ecosystem.

“More value is being created in private markets, over shorter timelines, than at any point in the history of venture,” said Asaf Horesh, Co-Managing Partner. “In a moment like this, one thing hasn’t changed, it’s only become more decisive: many of the most successful founders continue to partner with a relatively small group of highly sought-after venture managers. That is exactly where we invest, and earning a seat with them is the hardest, most important work we do. With more than $1.1 billion raised over the past three years across primary, secondary and co-investment strategies, we can support fund managers, companies and investors in more ways, while helping address the growing demand for liquidity across the venture ecosystem.”

Focused exclusively on venture and with offices in Tel Aviv, London, and New York, Vintage has built long-standing relationships with many of the venture ecosystem’s most sought-after managers in the U.S., Europe and Israel, while developing proprietary data and insights across thousands of venture funds and companies it tracks. The raise also marks another step for Vintage, as alongside current partners Asaf Horesh, Abe Finkelstein, Amit Frenkel, Iren Reznikov and Leyla Holterud, the firm has promoted Tzlil Kovetz to Partner, recognizing her progression from Associate to Partner and reflecting her contributions across the investment platform for the last five plus years. In addition, Ilan Leiferman, Vintage’s Chief Value Officer was also promoted to Partner. Ilan leads Value+, Vintage’s value creation platform, which connects portfolio companies with global enterprises from our network of hundreds, and has helped generate hundreds of millions of dollars in commercial opportunities across the firm’s ecosystem. Vintage also recently appointed Brachie Sprung as Chief Investor Relations Officer, bringing two decades of global experience across venture capital, fundraising, investor relations and strategic communications.

“We are deeply grateful to our LPs for the trust they continue to place in Vintage,” said Abe Finkelstein, Co-Managing Partner. “We never assume our place in the room; we earn it, by doing the work, holding a very high bar for how and where we invest, and putting years of relationships and market understanding to work for our investors. In a market like this, that discipline matters more than it ever has. The promotions of Tzlil Kovetz and Ilan Leiferman to Partner, and the appointment of Brachie Sprung as Chief Investor Relations Officer, reflect our commitment to building a multi-generational institution and strengthening the team that will help lead Vintage’s next chapter.”

About Vintage Investment Partners

Vintage Investment Partners is a global venture capital platform managing $4.8 billion and focused exclusively on venture. We invest in venture funds and venture-backed companies through long-standing relationships with many of the venture ecosystem’s most sought-after managers. Our Fund of Funds, Secondaries, and Growth investment strategies provide multiple access points across the venture market, bringing together deep relationships, proprietary data, and signals from enterprise demand. Value+ puts that platform to work, connecting the companies and managers we back with a network of more than 650 leading enterprises.

Past investment experience, manager relationships, fundraising success and portfolio company outcomes are not indicative of future results.

Disclaimer: This communication is provided for informational purposes only. Any statements regarding market opportunities, investment strategies, industry positioning, portfolio companies, manager relationships, or future prospects reflect current views and are subject to change. Past experience and achievements are not indicative of future results. Additionally, the views and opinions expressed herein are solely those of the Firm and do not constitute a guarantee of future results or performance.

SOURCE Vintage Investment Partners

New real-time, high-performance index engine enables marketplaces to quickly launch and evolve indices supporting emerging asset classes and new investment products.

STOCKHOLM, Oct. 21, 2026 — Vermiculus, a global independent provider of market infrastructure technology, has today launched VeriIndex, a real-time index engine that lets exchanges and marketplaces launch, run, and grow index offerings built around their own markets. As demand shifts towards more specialized indices, VeriIndex gives index operators the speed to bring new indices to market and the flexibility to extend into new asset classes.

The Vermiculus index engine brings index calculation, corporate-action processing and approved index changes together in a single system. At launch, it supports price-return and total-return indices.

Key capabilities include:

• Real-time calculation: the index calculator continuously calculates and publishes index values based on live market activity, distributed through standardized export interfaces.
• Next-business-day simulation: operators can preview the impact of scheduled corporate and index actions, and correct them, before the changes take effect.
• Extensible framework: configurable index administration, with support for adding new calculation and adjustment methodologies, instrument coverage and pricing capabilities.

“For index operators, control matters as much as speed. VeriIndex gives them direct control of day-to-day index operations, the ability to test changes before they go live, and a platform that can grow with their index offering,” says Fredrik Ohlsson, Senior Index Specialist at Vermiculus.

“The index market is evolving rapidly. Demand is moving beyond traditional flagship indices towards a much broader range of specialized index products, fueled by new investment products, emerging asset classes such as prediction markets, tokenized assets and perpetuals, and changing market needs. VeriIndex is our answer to that shift. Combined with our modular technology and unique delivery model, it allows us to respond quickly to market changes and turn new needs into new solutions,” says Henrik Rouet-Leduc, Deputy CEO of Vermiculus.

The index system is natively integrated with the VeriTrade™ exchange trading system. It can also be deployed on its own and integrated with other trading and post-trade systems. This launch further expands Vermiculus’ portfolio of cloud-native market infrastructure systems supporting trading, clearing, post-trade processing, and CSD operations.

About Vermiculus
About Vermiculus Vermiculus Financial Technology AB provides best-in-class trading, clearing, and CSD solutions to market participants around the world. Vermiculus’ solutions are the first to bring state-of-the-art advances in dynamic microservice architecture together with vast experience in clearing house, exchange, and CSD business requirements.

The company started its operation in 2020 and is founded by industry experts with the incentive to revolutionize the technology of exchanges, clearing houses, and CSDs. With its headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden, Vermiculus consists of hand-picked teams, trained to deliver mission-critical solutions. Learn more at www.vermiculus.se

For further information, please contact:
Amelie Hedenstierna – PR & Communications 
Vermiculus Financial Technology
Tel +46-(0)73 622 24 54
[email protected]

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/vermiculusft/r/vermiculus-launches-veriindex–a-real-time-index-engine-for-the-next-wave-of-specialized-indices,c4411809

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CHICAGO, Oct. 21, 2026 — WayUp, the job search and recruiting marketplace built exclusively for college students and early-career job seekers, today announced the launch of its redesigned mobile app for iOS and Android. The app sends real-time alerts the moment a followed company posts a new internship or entry-level role, and lets candidates apply using the resume, education, and experience already saved to their WayUp profile, removing the need to rebuild an application from scratch for every role.

The launch comes as the market for early-career hires has tightened measurably: recent-college-graduate unemployment reached roughly 5.6% in the second quarter of 2026, among the highest readings in a decade outside the pandemic, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. With fewer no-experience entry-level openings available and employers moving quickly once applications start arriving, how fast a candidate sees and acts on a posting has become a meaningful factor in getting noticed.

“Right now, nearly half of entry-level jobs that used to require zero experience have disappeared, and recent grad unemployment just hit its highest point in a decade outside the pandemic,” said Amy Farr-Jones, VP Growth at WayUp. “Students aren’t losing out because they’re not qualified—they’re losing out because they see the role three days too late. We built the new WayUp app so the moment a great entry-level role opens, the right person sees it first and can move on it immediately.”

The app is free to download and use, available now on the App Store and Google Play. Existing WayUp users can log in with their current account and keep their saved profile; new users can sign up directly in the app.

For more information, visit wayup.com.

About WayUp WayUp is a marketplace connecting college students and recent graduates with internships and entry-level jobs at companies ranging from startups to the Fortune 500. Candidates build a free profile and are matched to relevant openings, with employers able to reach out directly. WayUp also hosts Virtual Info Sessions connecting candidates with recruiters from companies including CVS Health, L’Oréal, and HSBC.

Media Contact:
Amy Farr-Jones
+61423947944
[email protected] 

SOURCE WayUp powered by Yello

NEW YORK, Oct. 21, 2026 — Braavo Capital, the leading non-dilutive financing platform for mobile apps and games, has committed more than $60 million to UA cohort financing facilities this year, building on over a decade of underwriting experience in the category.

Committed UA capacity

Braavo’s UA Cohort Financing facilities provide committed capital for monthly user acquisition spend. Companies draw as they spend, and Braavo is repaid from the revenue each cohort generates. Each advance is scoped to its own cohort rather than to company revenue or the balance sheet.

“The mechanics of cohort financing aren’t complicated. The harder part is understanding how a company can scale user acquisition, how its ROAS curves will evolve over time, and how much flexibility you can responsibly build into a facility,” said Mark Loranger, CEO of Braavo Capital. “Our experience lets us structure around a customer’s actual economics rather than starting with a predetermined template.”

Customer validation

Recent UA financing commitments include $15 million for the leading children’s tutoring app Buddy.ai, and $15 million for AI skincare app Lovi.

Buddy.ai has worked with Braavo since 2019 and completed six previous user acquisition financing transactions.

“Even when we considered alternatives for a larger cohort financing facility, Braavo still came out on top,” said Ivan Crewkov, CEO of Buddy.ai. “Seven years in, I know how they work and even what to expect if something doesn’t go to plan.”

“A committed facility means we can scale user acquisition without tying up equity to do it,” Crewkov added. “We know the terms, we know how the cohorts have to perform, and we can plan a year of user acquisition instead of a quarter. Equity goes into the product and the team.”

Since closing its facility in June, Lovi has already tripled its advertising spend.

“I was really impressed with Braavo’s analytical capabilities, the depth of their understanding of the subscription business, and how quickly they developed financing terms tailored to our specific needs,” said Alexey Shagraev, CEO of Lovi. “Their integration layer and experience meant they could move quickly as soon as they received our data. It was smooth sailing, and that gave me confidence that we were working with a partner who really understood our business.”

About Braavo Capital

Braavo Capital is a non-dilutive financing platform for mobile app companies, founded in New York City in 2015. Braavo has tracked more than $5 billion in app earnings across 10,000 apps and more than $1.5 billion in user acquisition spend.

Media Contact
Anna Butuzova, Marketing
[email protected] 

SOURCE Braavo Capital Inc.

Precision medicine pioneer to establish new clinical lab in Arizona, bringing predictive testing for renal denervation to market

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., Oct. 21, 2026 — Xcellerant Ventures today announced a $1 million Fund I investment in Geneticure, a precision medicine pioneer developing tests that predict patient response to hypertension treatments. The capital will accelerate Geneticure’s commercial scaling and support a new clinical laboratory in Arizona, expanding the state’s thriving life sciences ecosystem.

Geneticure utilizes a non-invasive cheek swab test to analyze four physiologic pathways, predicting whether a patient with resistant hypertension will respond to renal denervation (RDN)—an FDA-approved procedure with 35 million eligible U.S. patients. Because more than 10 million of those patients may see no benefit, Geneticure’s responder score gives physicians confidence in patient selection, lowers payer costs, and drives clinical adoption.

“Renal denervation is a game-changer, but identifying the right candidates has been the critical missing link,” said Mike Shufeldt, General Partner at Xcellerant Ventures. “Geneticure delivers that clarity. We are thrilled to back a team with deep Arizona roots as they build a state-of-the-art laboratory here, bringing healthtech innovation and biotech jobs to our local economy.”

“Increasing our presence in Arizona puts Geneticure close to the clinical partners and talent we need to scale,” said Scott Snyder, CEO of Geneticure. “Xcellerant brings more than capital, and we are excited to work with their team as we bring renal denervation responder testing to physicians and patients.”

Geneticure will use the funding to advance clinical validation, refine its reimbursement strategy, and build commercial readiness ahead of a planned Series A round. Alongside its RDN platform, Geneticure holds four U.S. patents and offers a commercial hypertension test guiding daily medication selection.

While Xcellerant’s institutional Fund I is now closed, individual investors can access Xcellerant’s early-stage healthcare pipeline through Jetstream Venture Fund (jvf.vc), a first-of-its-kind, retail-accessible venture fund designed to democratize VC investing.

About Geneticure

Geneticure is a precision medicine company with operations in Arizona and Minnesota. Its patented genetic tests help physicians predict patient response to hypertension treatments, including medication selection and renal denervation. geneticure.com.

About Xcellerant Ventures

Xcellerant Ventures is a Scottsdale, Arizona-based venture capital firm investing in early-stage healthcare technology companies that improve clinical outcomes and reduce costs. xcellerantventures.com. 

Media Contact: Dawson Fearnow, [email protected], 602-264-2655

SOURCE Xcellerant Ventures

Fast-growing innovator is establishing itself as the agentic operating system for the multi-trillion-dollar global CPG industry, reinventing how brands operate, compete and scale

CHICAGO and LONDON, Oct. 21, 2026 — Opply, the agentic operating system for consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands, has raised $7.5 million after growing gross revenue 15-fold in just 12 months. Its pioneering technology has the potential to transform the economics of the global CPG industry, dramatically reducing costs, accelerating growth and freeing businesses to focus on product innovation, profitability and expansion.

The company is capitalising on the rapid rise of vertical AI, with recent McKinsey & Company research¹ highlighting surging investment in industry-specific AI technologies designed to transform complex business operations. Opply is at the forefront of this shift, going beyond AI-driven analysis to actively execute and finance transactions. By combining specialised AI agents, proprietary data and deep industry expertise with an extensive supplier network and flexible financing, Opply is building a powerful competitive advantage.

The funding round, led by Chalfen Ventures with participation from Index Ventures, Anthemis, Entrepreneurs First, In This Together and Ventures Together, follows rapid international expansion. Since launching its Chicago operations in 2025, Opply’s US business has grown 30-fold in just 12 months, driven by demand from CPG brands looking to reduce costs, streamline operations and accelerate growth.

Unlocking growth in the $18.9 trillion global CPG market

The global CPG market is forecast to reach $18.9 trillion by 2031, according to Allied Market Research². In the US alone, the sector contributes $2.5 trillion to GDP and supports 22.3 million jobs, according to the Consumer Brands Association and PwC³.

Founded by Helen Murphy and Martin Postel, Opply is turning complex, resource-intensive operations into an intelligent engine for growth. Going far beyond simply connecting buyers and suppliers, its AI actively manages and executes critical operations, from sourcing and procurement to financing and supply chains. Its impact extends directly into real-world operations, from managing stock levels and coordinating production to ensuring deliveries run smoothly, enabling brands to scale faster and more efficiently.

Customers including UK drinks innovator Agua de Madre and US kombucha brand RMBR are demonstrating the transformative potential of its technology, with results including cost reductions of 40% and a 12-fold return on investment in just 12 months.

Mike Chalfen, Founder of Chalfen Ventures, commented: “It’s a beautiful thing to see a team I backed at the start exceed my very high expectations. Opply has all the ingredients to become a globally significant business: custom AIs that together have proven to make customer operations work end to end; as a result, exceptional growth; and a huge market opportunity in front of it. Its rapid expansion across both the UK and US demonstrates the strength of demand for technology that fundamentally changes how CPG businesses operate and scale. I believe Opply has the potential to become the operational backbone of a multi-trillion-dollar global industry, unlocking enormous value for businesses of every size.”

Helen Murphy, co-founder and CEO of Opply, said: “CPG supply chains have remained fragmented and manual for far too long. By taking operational complexity out of the equation, we give ambitious brands the headroom to grow faster, invest in innovation and reach more customers. Our AI technology doesn’t just tell brands what needs to be done. It does the work, managing everything from sourcing and procurement to payments and supply chains.

“This latest funding gives us the opportunity to bring that model to many more businesses, from ambitious emerging brands to major global players.”

About Opply

Opply is an AI-powered operating system for CPG brands, initially focused on food and beverage. Opply Brain combines specialised AI agents, proprietary data and an extensive supplier network to execute and manage core operations, including sourcing, procurement, financing, inventory, production planning and logistics. Founded in 2021 by Helen Murphy and Martin Postel, Opply operates across the UK, Europe and North America.

For more information: Opply.com

Sources:

1. McKinsey & Company: Europe’s new AI edge? The emerging application layer opportunity
2. Allied Market Research: FMCG Market (2022–2031)
3. Consumer Brands Association / PwC: Economic Contribution of the US Consumer Packaged Goods Industry

SOURCE Opply