London-based Magentic, a company building an AI Agent platform for the world’s supply chains, announced its launch today and has raised $5.5M (approximately €4.7M) in a Seed funding round led by Sequoia Capital.
“Today, the best AI companies are selling outcomes, not seats. In the old world, SaaS sold the promise of ROI. In the new world, AI delivers it. That’s why we’re proud to partner with Robin, Odhran, and the team at Magentic – their AI ‘Mages’ work seamlessly alongside procurement and supply chain teams to drive immediate P&L gains, and we can’t wait to see the impact they deliver as they continue to build,” says Julien Bek, Partner, Sequoia Capital
Others, including The Westly Group, First Momentum Ventures, and angel investors from SAP, Airbus, McKinsey & Company, Hugging Face, Ironclad, and Rosberg Ventures, also participated in the round.
The UK company will use the funds to accelerate product development and expand deployments with leading global manufacturers.
McKinsey & Company reports that 90 per cent of Chief Procurement Officers (CPOs) see supplier compliance issues as major problems, leading to an average waste of 2 per cent of their total spending, about $40M for every $2B spent.
Additionally, a partner at Magentic found that one in four procurement documents contained errors that affected profits.
Magentic: Streamlining global manufacturing supply chains
Magentic was founded by Robin Van Aeken (who led teams at McKinsey & Company for global manufacturers) and Odhran O’Donoghue (who holds a PhD in Machine Learning from the University of Oxford and led advanced AI projects at OpenAI, NASA, and the Crick Institute).
The company deploys off-the-shelf, procurement, and supply chain domain-specific AI teammates — Mages, into operations.
These AI agents are designed to hunt down, prioritise, and deliver hard savings, even in messy, unstructured environments where master data is incomplete or inconsistent.
An example is a $30B manufacturer that saved 4 per cent on its machinery spare parts procurement and is now rolling out Magentic’s AI teammates to additional spend categories.
While traditional procurement tools focus on sourcing and negotiation, Magentic tackles the root cause of value leakage in post-contract processes — unclaimed credits, compliance gaps, and fractured supplier data.
In large enterprises, this translates to tens of millions in missed savings each year.
Odhran O’Donoghue, Magentic co-founder and CTO, says, “For the first time, we have the technology to understand all our data across previously incompatible systems. At Magentic, we’re motivated by the question: how can complex companies deploy trustworthy, reliable systems capable of following company playbooks to improve outcomes for their suppliers and their customers.”
Magentic’s platform is “secure by design,” fully compliant with SOC2 Type II, ISO 27001, and GDPR. Each action a Mage takes is backed by traceable documentation—be it a clause, invoice, or thread, ensuring transparency and reliability in critical workflows.
The company’s customers span consumer packaged goods, pharmaceutical, and advanced manufacturing sectors across the US and Europe.
Magentic is deploying new AI teammates to prepare and defend against supplier tariff claims, find more opportunities for savings, and operate “end-to-end”, always with humans in the loop.
“Supply chains are the hidden engines of our world, responsible for every phone, medicine, and plane in our lives,” said Robin Van Aeken, Magentic’s co-founder and CEO. “Procurement teams are at breaking point, spending hours navigating unstructured information, ever more complex demands, and now global conflict and tariffs.”
