An artificial intelligence (AI) trailblazer, wherEX specializes in making B2B commerce transparent while also working to increase competition across the space.
The company launched in 2016 in Santiago, Chile, working in the salmon industry before expanding to other sectors. Its main goal was to solve the common pain points in the digitization of competitive pricing for procurement and sourcing, per the press release.
The Series A round was led by Kayyak Ventures, with participation by FJ Labs, Jaguar Ventures and Tuesday Capital. The startup also picked up two additional co-founders in this round — Ben Garcia and Francisco Puente — both of whom are Y-Combinator alumni class of S20 and serial entrepreneurs since leaving MIT three years ago.
See also: Connecting The B2B Payments Dots For The Age Of Digital Marketplaces
This fresh round of capital will be used by the startup to further its expansion across Latin America and the U.S. by next year. The U.S. market is considered to have some 60,000 prospective clients — close to the size of LatAm, the release stated.
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“B2B commerce in the U.S. is still in its infancy in terms of digital, financing and sourcing. We see an opportunity to bring a comprehensive and analytical e-sourcing solution to the U.S. market to make B2B transactions easy,” said Cristobal Silva, managing partner at Kayak Ventures.
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wherEX grew its traded volume and customer base by 220 percent during COVID-19 amid supply chain disruption, as procurement teams faced challenges in sourcing new suppliers.
