Kinaxis to acquire retail and CPG focused AI solutions provider Rubikloud

Kinaxis acquisition of Rubikloud : Kinaxis, a Canadian supply chain management and sales and operation planning software company, has agreed to acquire Rubikloud, a provider of artificial intelligence solutions (AI solutions) for the retail and consumer packaged goods (CPG) industries, for $60 million in an all-cash deal.

Rubikloud’s AI solutions are said to help in the automation of supply chain prescriptive analytics and decision-making for globally-known retailers and CPG manufacturers in the health and beauty, grocery, and household segments.

The Toronto-based company offers demand forecasting and automation to handle and optimize trade promotions, pricing and assortment for driving product demand and boost financial results dramatically.

Kinaxis said that it will improve the demand planning capabilities of its supply chain management solution RapidResponse with the offerings of Rubikloud, thereby expects initial opportunities in the company’s CPG customer base and in the course of time for other industries like life sciences.

Furthermore, the acquisition of the AI solutions provider gives a springboard to Kinaxis into the enterprise retail industry.

John Sicard – President and CEO of Kinaxis, commenting on Kinaxis acquisition of Rubikloud, said: “Rubikloud has capabilities and value that we can offer our CPG customers today, leads us into the retail industry with some bellwether accounts, and adds a group of approximately 80 people to an already-impressive AI and machine learning (ML) team here at Kinaxis. Over time, this enhanced group will contribute to new and existing AI-powered capabilities across the full Kinaxis RapidResponse platform and applications.

“This acquisition reflects the growing importance of AI and ML to power intelligent automation and augment human decision-making to better deliver on customer promises, remove waste and increase resiliency for effective risk management.”

The SaaS-based ML offerings of Rubikloud are said to empower retail and CPG manufacturers to transform their key operations by enhancing and automating complex, profit-generating decisions.

Rubikloud’s AI capabilities and intuitive tools are claimed to enable users to make use of disparate data sources to improve forecast accuracy, inventory availability, site-level allocations, and promotion plans by letting users to run boundless simulations in real-time.

Commenting on Kinaxis acquisition of Rubikloud, Kerry Liu – CEO of Rubikloud, said: “We founded Rubikloud with the belief that purpose-built AI could be used to solve some of the most complex industry problems and we have spent the last seven years building a fantastic product that receives validation from global customers every day.

“We’re excited at the prospect of joining Kinaxis, which helps us bring our innovations to a much broader customer base at a faster pace than on our own. Not only that, being two strong Canadian companies we see great cultural synergy and look forward to working on the complex problems we know RapidResponse and concurrent planning can solve for customers.”

The closing of Kinaxis acquisition of Rubikloud is subject to customary closing conditions.