Ex-Tesla Leaders Launch Atomic: AI-Powered Supply Chain Revolution

Former Tesla supply chain leaders create Atomic, an AI inventory solution | TechCrunch

Tesla famously struggled to scale up production of the Model 3 sedan in 2018 -- so much so that CEO Elon Musk said his company was weeks away from collapsing. That near-death experience helped spawn a whole new company called Atomic that's built around using AI to streamline supply chains. Co-founded by former Tesla employees Michael Rossiter and Neal Suidan, Atomic was created inside DVx Ventures, the firm run by former Tesla president Jon McNeill. Rossiter is also a partner at DVx, which has led a $3 million seed round for Atomic, with Seattle-based Madrona Ventures joining. "Michael and Neil experienced this pain firsthand as leaders at Tesla in the supply chain, and I saw that work first hand -- because they worked for me," McNeill said in an interview with TechCrunch. Atomic plans to deploy its agentic AI with customers to make inventory planning faster and easier. It's already been working with pilot customers. In one case, the customer was able to cut inventory levels in half while maintaining a 99% in-stock rate. Being able to strike a balance like that frees up working capital that a business can use in other places, while also reducing risk, McNeill said. "If you have too much capital tied up in inventory, you could really harm the business. And if you have too little, where you don't have the right things in stock when the customer is ready to purchase, then you're costing yourself big time," he said. More broadly, Atomic's early customers have been in the consumer packaged goods, food and beverage, and apparel industries. The company claims it has helped those customers reduce inventory costs by 20% to 50%. With so much uncertainty in the world right now, there's big demand for solutions like Atomic's because existing ones aren't built for this kind of volatility, Suidan said in an interview. Currently, "planners will, like, lock themselves in a room for a week trying to put together different scenarios, present those back to the leadership, and get a question they weren't anticipating," Suidan said. Then they "have to go back to these documents, spend a few days, and it's becomes this process that can be all consuming for them, because they don't have the tools available to manage the uncertainty with confidence." Atomic's software pulls information from those same source documents but lets inventory planners and supply chain team members quickly simulate multiple scenarios -- something that would normally take hours or days. Rossiter and Suidan pride themselves on being able to get up and running with a customer quickly, and with adaptability. "You can't be writing a custom application for every customer. You need a flexible data model that's generalized, that can apply to everyone, because then you can be up and running really, really quickly," Suidan said. "And you need to give precision control to the planner so that they feel true ownership over the plan, and they can explain it inside and out, and can pull all the levers in the plan. And if you can combine those two things, which has been our total focus, then you solve the problem for the planner." Many Tesla employees have gone on to found their own startups, including former CTO JB Straubel (Redwood Materials) and, most recently, former SVP Drew Baglino (Heron). But Atomic is different. Instead of just taking skills learned at Tesla and applying them to new problems, Suidan and Rossiter are building Atomic around a philosophy they developed together at the automaker. "They built the end-to-end supply chain orchestration system from scratch" at Tesla, McNeill said. Suidan said the value of what they built at Tesla was just as much about the solution as it was changing the process. "The way the business was planned when we started was a dozen different teams working in isolation, passing these spreadsheets around, trying to tie it together once a week to present executives some summary of a plan, and then spending most of the rest of the week, chasing our tail, trying to figure out why one part didn't work or the other part didn't work," Suidan said. "Our jobs became to to build a system that could thrive and drive this company, keep its dynamism, keep its ability to hit these business targets." Suidan said the planning system they built inside Tesla resulted in a "complete transformation" in the day-to-day operations. While Rossiter left Tesla shortly after the ramp-up of the Model 3, Suidan stuck around until 2022. In 2023 that Suidan said the two put their heads together and asked: "How could this kind of transformation work for everybody, all businesses?" And they set out to create Atomic inside DVx. In typical Tesla fashion, they really are aiming that high. "Our ambition, our vision, is to support every company that sells physical goods," Rossiter said.

Ex-Tesla Operations Leaders Launch Atomic, Raise $3M Seed to Revolutionize Supply Chain Planning with Agentic AI

Enter your email to get Benzinga's ultimate morning update: The PreMarket Activity Newsletter NEW YORK, April 15, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Atomic, an AI-powered platform reshaping the $20 billion supply chain planning market, today announced that it closed a $3 million seed round. The round included DVx Ventures, the company creation platform run by former Tesla president Jon McNeill, and Madrona Ventures, a three-decade-old venture capital firm known for backing transformative AI startups and iconic companies like Amazon, Snowflake, and Smartsheet. Atomic was founded by Michael Rossiter and Neal Suidan, who experienced the challenges of supply chain planning first-hand as leaders in Tesla's supply chain and demand planning team. The inspiration came during Tesla's Model 3 launch in 2018, when they realized how dependent the team was on unwieldy spreadsheets that could not keep up with the speed of changes at the business. The necessities of scaling led them to build Tesla's end-to-end supply chain orchestration system from scratch. With Atomic, the team set out to solve the same challenges of supply planning for all companies that sell physical goods with an approach that can be rapidly deployed and generalized to any type of supply chain. "Our vision is to ensure every physical good is actively managed," said Neal Suidan, Founder and CEO, Atomic. "Planners are the unsung heroes of consumer brands, holding together supply chains through spreadsheets and sheer force of will. But they deserve better tools. We built Atomic to be the inventory planning system we always wished we had. With the support of DVx and Madrona, we're scaling quickly to bring this technology to more brands, helping them move beyond spreadsheets and into the future of AI-powered inventory management. I'm Sick of this Sheet! Trillions of dollars are tied up in slow-moving and poorly planned inventories in the U.S. alone. The vast majority of inventory decisions -- even at the largest companies -- are still made using spreadsheets, which are error-prone and slow to update, and difficult to scale. This leads to missed sales, bloated inventory levels, and eroded confidence in supply chain operations. Existing supply chain planning software often forces lengthy, high-cost implementations and rigid systems that drive planners back to spreadsheets. "What Atomic is doing reminds me of Tesla's approach to breaking down barriers - taking something slow and inefficient and replacing it with speed and intelligence," said Jon McNeill, former Tesla President and Founder of DVx Ventures. "By leveraging agentic AI, they are building this incredible, agile system that can be set up in under an hour and is truly a game-changer for consumer brands." Proven Results for Clients Since launching its product in early 2024, Atomic has delivered measurable results for early customers in consumer packaged goods, food & beverage, and apparel, with: 20-50% reduction in inventory costs while improving in-stock rates40+ hours saved per week, allowing planners to focus on high-impact work3.5x increase in inventory turnover, translating to millions in freed-up cash Atomic's simulation engine models supply and demand at the transaction level, giving planners complete transparency and the ability to adapt workflows on the fly. One Atomic customer cut its inventory levels in half while maintaining a 99% in-stock rate - just 3 months after onboarding. "We reduced our working capital by millions. It changed our strategy to fund the business this year" said that company's President. "Atomic is the one SaaS tool that is open all day, every day on my laptop," said the SVP of Operations at another Atomic client, where Atomic helped to improve in-stock rates by over 10 percentage points. "I can't do my job well without it." AI-Powered Supply Chain Control Unlike most planning software that requires costly integrations and lengthy implementations, Atomic is using agentic AI to flip the script. Its configurable framework form fits to client data sources without requiring system integrators or manual configurations. Within an hour, Atomic clients can be initially onboarded and begin fine-tuning forecasts, simulate disruptions, and make adjustments through an intuitive, no-code interface. "We've personally grappled with the pain of supply planning as operators," said Michael Rossiter, Founder of Atomic and Principal at DVx Ventures. "Planners shouldn't have to waste time wrangling spreadsheets and Atomic frees them up to make strategic decisions from day one. When you're drowning, you don't want swim lessons - you need help immediately. So we made onboarding speed our top priority." Strategic Backing from Industry Leaders Madrona, an early backer of Amazon, Snowflake, and Smartsheet, invested in Atomic through Fund X, a new initiative focused on applied AI for enterprise transformation. "Atomic has keen insight into a huge business challenge -- and is solving it with AI to deliver tangible, immediate results that would be otherwise impossible," said Matt McIlwain, Managing Director at Madrona. "This is exactly the kind of applied AI innovation poised to transform the industry." What's Next For Atomic With this funding, Atomic plans to expand its engineering team, enhance AI capabilities, and deepen its integrations with leading ERP and e-commerce platforms. The company is targeting to offer Rapid Onboarding for NetSuite clients by the end of 2025, removing the last friction points to enterprise adoption. For more information and the latest updates from Atomic, visit https://www.atomic.supply/ or follow on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/atomicsupply/ Media Relations Contact: Dana Davis | Steelwire | dana@steelwire.co Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs