Boston-based supply chain startup Atomic has closed a $12.5 million Series A funding round, bringing its total capital raised to approximately $15 million. The company, which emerged from stealth last year, was incubated at DVx Ventures and led by former Tesla executives who aim to replace manual inventory management with autonomous AI systems.
The new investment was led by growth equity firm Klass Capital and Seattle-based venture capital firm Madrona Venture Group. In conjunction with the funding announcement, Atomic appointed Jeff Goodrich, a former Tesla planning director, as its chief technology officer and third co-founder.
Atomic’s technology originated during the 2018 production ramp of the Tesla Model 3. Co-founders Michael Rossiter and Neal Suidan developed an early iteration of the system when the automaker’s reliance on spreadsheets proved inadequate for the speed of required planning adjustments. The platform simulates various scenarios to determine optimal inventory levels and locations, eventually evolving from a recommendation engine into a fully autonomous decision-making tool.
Jon McNeill, a former Tesla president and investor at DVx Ventures, noted that Atomic’s annual recurring revenue has quintupled since the start of the year. This financial traction has attracted high-profile clients, including DoorDash and HelloFresh. According to McNeill, DoorDash now utilizes Atomic’s software for roughly 90% of its purchasing decisions across hundreds of sites.
“The company has transitioned from pilot customers into real customers, and by real customers, it’s DoorDash-scale customers,” McNeill said. “The product has evolved from being an optimization platform that gives recommendations to a platform that not only gives recommendations but it makes decisions.”
Rossiter, who serves as CEO, described the challenge of supply chain management as navigating an “infinite search space for optimization.” He stated that AI allows the system to identify the most effective paths through complex operational variables. The software is designed to be industry-agnostic, adapting to specific “decision rules” even when they are not formally documented by client staff.
Beyond food delivery, Atomic is expanding into consumer packaged goods (CPG), mobility, and manufacturing sectors. McNeill highlighted that the company successfully compressed its onboarding timeline, making deployment seamless for new clients—a key factor in securing investor interest.
“Decision speed is an advantage in any business,” Rossiter said, referencing a core principle he observed during his time at Tesla. He argued that faster decision-making compounds over time, providing a significant competitive edge over traditional automakers that may require weeks to finalize similar operational choices.
Rossiter expressed hope that Atomic’s technology would encourage more organizations to prioritize operational data, noting that finance-related data often receives greater attention than supply chain metrics.
From Tesla chaos to automating grocery chains—this team clearly knows how to handle high-pressure supply chain issues effectively.
Great for efficiency, but are we losing the human touch in logistics? Hard to tell with all these tech buzzwords.
DoorDash using AI for 90% of purchasing is wild. I guess I’m eating at the mercy of algorithms now!