nextmv raises $8M Series A to increase accessibility to its automation optimization tech – TechCrunch

Nextmv, a platform that optimizes and tests decision models for logistics companies, announced the close of an $8 million Series A round earlier today.

FirstMark, an existing investor, doubled down on nextmv and led the Series A. Other investors include Github CTO Jason Warner, Seamless founder Jason Finger, Stripe COO Claire Johnson, Ankit Agarwal from Greenhawk Capital, as well as other institutional investors such as 2048, Dynamo, and Atypical.

Image Credits: nextmv

Founded by Carolyn Mooney and Ryan O’Neil, nextmv simplifies the process of optimizing and testing logistics-focused decision models. Consider a company like GrubHub, where the duo worked previously. GrubHub has to weigh a wide variety of priorities each time an order comes through on the platform, from speed of delivery to mileage on the drivers’ cars to overall efficiency.

It takes an immense amount of resources, and personnel talent, to optimize the algorithm running those platforms based on the company’s key performance indicators, or KPIs. And if those KPIs change, or tweaks to the algorithm need to be made, it takes even more resources to test those modifications.

And you would need a simulated environment to test the changes, something that nextmv has provided since its launch.

On the heels of this latest round, nextmv is working to simplify its product. The company has launched nextmv Cloud to allow developers, not just operations researchers, to use its software. nextmv Cloud has quick start models in the routing and delivery space to allow developers to automate decision-making, with plans to launch into new verticals in the coming months.

Before nextmv, it could take an entire team of operations researchers to optimize decision-making models and simulate test environments. When nextmv launched, a team still needed to have at least one operations researcher to use the product. Now, developers can hop on the platform and get started.

“There are hundreds of thousands of operations researchers, like my cofounder, out there that are trying to solve these problems in a research capacity or in very specialized groups within companies,” said Mooney. “But there are millions of developers out there. Why can’t this be a superpower that every developer has in their pocket. It’s the same way that Twilio made it so that every every engineer could be a messaging engineer.”

Image Credits: nextmv

A good chunk of the funding is going toward building out that Cloud platform to productize and distribute the nextmv technology and increase accessibility, but the company is also using funding to ramp up a content arm to help users explore the software.

Eventually, nextmv wants to build out a community arm of the platform, letting developers show each other how they’re automating decisions, not unlike Figma Community.