Kinaxis buys Rubikloud

OTTAWA – Kinaxis Inc. is acquiring Toronto-based Rubikloud, a provider of AI solutions that automate supply chain prescriptive analytics and decision-making in the retail and consumer packaged goods (CPG) industries.

Kinaxis will acquire Rubikloud for US$60 million in an all-cash transaction that is expected to close within 60 days. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions.

Rubikloud’s AI-based products include demand forecasting and automation to manage and optimize trade promotions, pricing and assortment. Kinaxis will enhance its RapidResponse’s demand planning capabilities with the Rubikloud offerings, and use the acquisition to gain entry into the enterprise retail industry.

“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,” said John Sicard, president and CEO of 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 machine learning (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.”

Rubikloud’s SaaS-based ML offerings improve forecast accuracy, site-level allocations, inventory availability and promotion plans by allowing users to run simulations in real time.

“We founded Rubikloud with the belief that purpose-built AI could be used to solve some of the most complex industry problems,” said Kerry Liu , CEO, Rubikloud.

“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.”