Tim Spencer realized how complicated manufacturing supplies can be while running Markai, an e-commerce startup in Asia, during the pandemic.
“We had thousands of suppliers and distributed products to dozens of countries around the world,” Spencer (pictured left) told TechCrunch. His staff was overwhelmed by the manual complexity of sourcing suppliers, negotiating pricing, tracking orders and managing payments.
“I found myself running this big team that wasn’t really set up for success,” he said. He sold Markai in 2023, just as it was becoming clear that genetic AI could streamline the most time-consuming procurement hurdles for manufacturers and distributors.
Later that year, Spencer started Diderot with Lorenz Pallhuber (center photo), a veteran of McKinsey’s procurement practice, and Tom Petit, Landis’ former technical co-founder.
Didero, whose mission is to automate many of the complexities of global procurement, just raised a $30 million series round from Chemistry and Headline, with participation from Microsoft’s venture fund M12.
“Global trade works on natural language communication,” Spencer said. “It’s email, WeChat, phone calls, shopping orders and packing lists.”
Until the advent of genetic artificial intelligence, these fragmented pieces had to be tracked by people who spent their days hunting down suppliers and manually updating logging systems. Didero claims its platform can absorb this communication, putting a significant portion of the procurement workflow on autopilot.
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Didero acts as a layer of artificial intelligence that sits on top of a company’s existing ERP, acting as a coordinator that reads incoming communications and automatically performs the necessary updates and tasks.
“The goal is to go from ‘I need a good’ to payment without having to lift a finger,” Spencer said.
Unlike Levelpath, Zip or Oro Labs, which use artificial intelligence to streamline corporate purchases, Didero focuses on the supply chain. Its platform is designed for manufacturers and distributors who need to source raw materials and inputs needed to manufacture or sell their products.
Didero has some smaller competitors that can handle some of the work the company does. For example, Cavela and Pietra help brands source and negotiate prices with manufacturers, but according to Spencer, these companies serve small and medium-sized companies and do not handle the full procurement process, from first quote to final payment.
Didero has dozens of clients but names only one, Traceprovider of sustainable, plant-based packaging.
