Tysons, Virginia-based Helios Artificial Intelligence has been named a winner of Walmart’s 11th Annual Open Call – the first recipient in the software category.
As a result, the company has signed a deal (“golden ticket”) to provide its climate risk and price forecasting software for Walmart.
Walmart held its 11th Annual Open Call event in September at its home office in Bentonville, Arkansas, attracting more than 500 entrepreneurs from across the country to pitch their products to representatives in hopes of landing a spot on store shelves and online.
With more than 4,600 Walmart stores in the U.S. and thousands of produce SKUs needed on a daily basis, maintaining a sustainable, uninterrupted supply chain is a business imperative.
With Helios AI’s platform, Walmart can evaluate the medium- and long-term climate risks facing its global agricultural supply chain to secure sustainable sourcing.
“Walmart is leading the way when it comes to leveraging artificial intelligence to strengthen its supply chain,” said Francisco Martin-Rayo, co-founder and CEO of Helios.
“Helios’ winning the ‘golden ticket’ is not only a great testament to our technology but also proof that there are urgent needs from procurement teams to climate-proof their supply chains – especially those at the most globalized levels.”
Price forecasting
In tandem with this new partnership, Helios AI is also announcing a new suite of features that will empower agri-food procurement teams and supply chain managers to make smarter, faster and more informed decisions.
Some of the key enhanced features include:
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Future climate risk predictions: The ability to provide climate risk and weather projections for an entire year into the future helps customers estimate supply and prices with greater accuracy.
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Historical pricing and price estimates for fruits and vegetables: Enterprise customers soon will be able to explore global, country and regional averages and ranges, interact with prices by origin region or shipping point and analyze prices by variety, grade and organic status.
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Choose a timeframe: Another new addition is the ability to change the timeframe of all charts and KPIs, instead of pre-defined timeframes, allowing customers to choose any period they are interested in analyzing, starting at one month and expanding to two full years.
In addition, customers will have access to new metrics for individual growing locations, including days above 90 degrees Fahrenheit, below freezing or with excessive rainfall.
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