Former Amazon Consumer Head Launches Auger, an AI-Driven Startup Building a Modern Supply Chain OS
# Dave Clark Made Amazon a Logistics Giant. Now He’s Raised $100M to Help Fortune 500 Optimize Supply Chains
Author: Jason Del Rey
October 8, 2024 at 9:23 AM (ET)
Dave Clark is leveraging his two-decade experience at Amazon to launch his own startup.
During more than two decades at Amazon, Dave Clark oversaw the online retailer’s transformation into a shipping and delivery powerhouse, eventually rising to become Jeff Bezos’ second-in-command before serving under Bezos’ successor Andy Jassy.
Now, Clark has gathered years of expertise and is putting it towards entrepreneurship. After a short and tumultuous stint as an executive at supply chain startup Flexport, Clark founded Auger, an AI-driven supply chain startup. In an interview with Fortune this Monday, he announced that Auger had successfully secured $100 million in Series A funding from investment firm Oak HC/FT. Clark’s goal is to help mid-sized companies within global supply chains—think those ranked outside the top 50 of the Fortune 500—integrate various supply chain systems and their data from different providers into a single operating system that resembles consumer applications rather than cumbersome enterprise solutions.
“These software pieces don’t really ‘talk’ to each other; one friend calls it patchwork software,” Clark said, referring to traditional supply chain systems. “The parts are integrated but do not work together, so people end up building analyst teams with Excel. An astonishing amount of supply chains in the world actually run on Excel.”
Through Auger, Clark aims to enable business users to get real-time answers to pressing questions about inventory, forecasts, and other critical areas via simple text queries. This visibility should help boost supply chain efficiency and reduce costs, according to Clark.
“How can we make companies operate their supply chains as simply and elegantly as they use consumer apps every day?” Clark asked rhetorically. “This technology is completely available; I just think it hasn’t been put together.”
Clark’s primary target market for Auger will be those with global supply chains but not large enough to have substantial internal tech departments. The startup may initially focus on companies headquartered in the United States, but hopes to eventually expand into government and defense sectors.
To launch Auger, Clark moved back from Texas to Washington State, setting up headquarters in Bellevue. According to a spokesperson, the startup plans to increase its workforce to 30-40 people within the next six months. Auger has not yet launched any products, and Clark has not decided which AI models the company will use.
Clark spent 23 years at Amazon before retiring from his position as CEO of Global Consumer in 2022, a role that required him to report directly to Amazon CEO Bezos and later Jassy. For nearly ten years at Amazon, he held what was essentially the Chief Supply Chain Officer role, responsible for launching and expanding Amazon’s last-mile delivery network and laying the groundwork for new regional warehouse structures, which helped speed up deliveries according to the company.
Clark left Amazon to become CEO of freight software startup Flexport partly due to friction with his new boss Jassy. But Clark stayed at the startup for only a year before being ousted by founder Ryan Petersen in a dramatic and confusing move along with other executives.
Clark said he hasn’t spoken recently with either Petersen or Jassy, who reportedly considered running for Governor of Texas in 2026. However, he told Fortune that after current Governor Greg Abbott announced his intention to run again earlier this year, Clark decided not to enter the race. “He’s a great governor,” Clark said about Abbott, though he noted he hopes to eventually get involved in politics partly due to disappointment with career politicians.
“Many of the issues we talk about today, whether it’s immigration or other topics, are highly solvable problems where rational people on both sides might share 80% to 90% of the same goals but can’t reach them because fighting for their political careers is too advantageous,” he said. “I think if there was a world where politicians… that’s not their career… you have a higher chance of solving some long-standing issues that cause a lot of dysfunction.”
Regarding Auger’s motivation, Clark noted that he had already considered addressing similar problems while at Flexport.
“When I went to Flexport, I thought we could build the same type of thing for other companies as we did at Amazon,” Clark pointed out. “That was my intention when I went there, but ultimately, we didn’t align on our mission.”
Now, he has a second chance. $100 million in funding is behind him.
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Source: Fortune
