Pipe17 Secures $15.5M Series A Funding and Appoints New COO to Advance AI-Powered Order Operations

Pipe17 Raises Series A, Brings on First COO As Demand for AI-Powered Order Operations Takes Off

SEATTLE, Jan. 10, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, Pipe17, a leading provider of AI-powered composable order operations, announced a $15.5 million funding round, underscoring the company's rapid growth and strategic vision to transform commerce operations. In tandem, the company recently hired its first Chief Operating Officer, Kelly Goetsch, a recognized industry pioneer who joins Pipe17 from commercetools, where he helped scale the company to over $100 million in ARR. Goetsch also co-founded and ran the MACH Alliance, an industry consortium of 100+ vendors advocating for composable MACH (Microservices, APIs, Cloud, and Headless) technologies. His decision to join Pipe17 highlights the massive opportunity supporting the shift to omnichannel selling and fulfillment. Pipe17 is revolutionizing commerce operations at a critical moment for businesses. Consumers are shopping across an increasingly fragmented ecosystem of channels -- from TikTok and Instagram to Amazon -- with higher expectations for consistency and delivery. That means businesses must contend with synchronizing order, pricing, and inventory data in real-time, across multiple systems -- from ERPs and 3PLs to commerce platforms, marketplaces, and stores. At the same time, companies are facing mounting pressure to maximize efficiency and profitability, making the stakes higher than ever to succeed in the commerce landscape. From the beginning, Pipe17 realized traditional order management systems (OMS) were becoming outdated due to their inability to handle the complex demands of modern commerce. These monolithic applications are tailored to support in-store operations, leading to inefficiencies and unnecessary costs as businesses expand to include direct-to-consumer, B2B, and dropshipping. Pipe17's AI-powered Order Operations platform eliminates these challenges, providing a seamless, MACH-based solution that easily integrates systems and synchronizes data flows with speed and precision with no code or developers required. The platform features an AI Order Operations Agent, Pippen. An industry first, Pippen is trained on Pipe17's deep understanding of Order Operations and assists users with order routing, administration, exception handling, and more. By working with Pipe17, businesses can leverage the platform and AI innovations like Pippen to sell across channels with precision, greater agility and reduced operating costs, all while delivering exceptional customer experiences in today's dynamic market. "Joining Pipe17 feels like history repeating itself. When I joined commercetools, I saw a massive market opportunity to redefine how businesses power ecommerce via headless and composable commerce infrastructure - and we did exactly that," said Kelly Goetsch, Chief Operating Officer, Pipe17. "Now, with Pipe17, I see the same potential - this time in pioneering the future of composable order operations. This platform is fast, scalable, and uniquely designed to unify systems and channels, enabling businesses to stay competitive and deliver exceptional customer experiences." Industry Momentum and Look Ahead Pipe17 already powers the operations of leading brands such as Allbirds, Made In Cookware, Orthofeet and MaryRuth Organics, and major logistics providers like Ryder, UPS and FedEx. By streamlining order flow and operations for brands, retailers, and logistics providers alike, Pipe17 is able to provide additional value for the entire ecommerce operations ecosystem. In just 18 months, Pipe17 has doubled average revenue per deal, increased average deal size by nearly 3X and continues to attract talent from major industry players including Salesforce and commercetools - ensuring the company has both new and veteran knowledge to address the fragmented commerce operations space and capitalize on the market opportunity at hand with order operations. This latest funding round was led by LFX Venture Partners, with participation from current investors GLP and others, including convertible note funding. "We are at a pivotal moment in commerce, where businesses are under immense pressure to adapt to an increasingly complex and fragmented landscape," said Mo Afshar, CEO and Co-Founder, Pipe17. "Pipe17 is uniquely positioned to address these challenges and shape the future of commerce. This funding round, combined with Kelly's hire, signals the next phase of our growth. We will continue to build - and scale - the infrastructure businesses need to unify their operations and unlock new levels of efficiency." Supporting Quotes "We are proud to lead Pipe17's latest funding round," said John Seung, Managing Partner, LFX. "Pipe17 is the most capable technology platform to orchestrate the rapidly proliferating point-of-sale and distribution points in e-commerce. We are excited to have Kelly Goetsch join this veteran team to further accelerate growth." "Pipe17 has been a game-changer for our business. The platform has simplified our supply chain and eliminated operational headaches with its automated order processing and connecting inventory, warehousing, financials and logistics on the backend. Pipe17 allows us to easily scale as we expand into new markets and online channels. The speed to launch that Pipe17 provides is best in class; and at the same time, our customers are experiencing faster, more reliable deliveries and better communication, which is critical when it comes to building loyalty in today's competitive market," said Kevin Nohl, Sr. Vice President Global Supply Chain, Aterian. "Pipe17's approach to Order Operations is a game-changer. As the market shifts toward efficiency and scalability, solutions like Pipe17 - with the company's technical chops and AI expertise - will be critical for businesses to stay competitive," said Rick Watson, RMW Commerce Consulting. To learn more about Pipe17 and schedule a demonstration, visit the website here. About Pipe17 Pipe17 Inc. provides AI-Powered Order Operations solutions for modern merchants and fulfillment service providers. Based in Seattle, Pipe17 is the fastest and easiest way to make omnichannel order flows touchless and cost-efficient, from order to inventory to fulfillment across DTC, B2B, and Retail. Pipe17 is the only ecommerce order operations solution that combines rapid deployment, seamless orders-to-anywhere automation, real-time visibility, and elastic scale. Learn more at https://Pipe17.com. Contact Info Jon Gettinger, CMO, Pipe17 [email protected] Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

E-commerce logistics startup Pipe17 lands $15.5M and hires its first COO

Pipe17, a Seattle startup that built a platform to manage e-commerce operations, announced today that it has raised a $15.5 million Series A round and hired its first chief operations officer. New COO Kelly Goetsch was previously chief strategy officer at commercetools, a German company supporting digital commerce that has worldwide operations and raised more than $300 million. He also co-founded and led the MACH Alliance, an industry group promoting MACH (microservices, APIs, cloud-based and headless) technologies. "Joining Pipe17 feels like history repeating itself," Goetsch said in a statement. "When I joined commercetools, I saw a massive market opportunity to redefine how businesses power ecommerce via headless and composable commerce infrastructure -- and we did exactly that. Now, with Pipe17, I see the same potential." Pipe17 has raised a total of $25 million since its launch in 2019 -- which came shortly before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and a surge in online shopping. The startup built an artificial intelligence technology that tackles seemingly every aspect of e-commerce, including management of supply chain, pricing, order processing, inventory data, warehousing, order routing and delivery logistics. Pipe17's customers include retailers such as Allbirds, Made In Cookware, Orthofeet and MaryRuth Organics, and logistics providers including Ryder, UPS and FedEx. Mo Afshar is Pipe17's co-founder and CEO. He was previously CEO of Spoken Communications, a Seattle company that used speech recognition technology to automate processes in call centers. It was acquired by Avaya in 2018. Pipe17 co-founder and head of product Dave Shaffer worked at Oracle and Workato. Pipe17's headcount is 58. The new funding round was led by LFX Venture Partners. Current investors including GLP also participated.

Pipe17 Raises $15.5 Million to Scale AI-Powered Composable Order Operations Platform | PYMNTS.com

Software company Pipe17 raised $15.5 million in a Series A funding round to support its efforts to build and scale its infrastructure for artificial intelligence-powered composable order operations. The company's AI-powered Order Operations platform integrates systems and synchronizes data flows to support omnichannel selling and fulfillment, Pipe17 said in a Friday (Jan. 10) press release. "We are at a pivotal moment in commerce, where businesses are under immense pressure to adapt to an increasingly complex and fragmented landscape," Pipe17 CEO and co-founder Mo Afshar said in the release. "Pipe17 is uniquely positioned to address these challenges and shape the future of commerce." Pipe17's platform is designed to help retailers provide the consistency and delivery consumers expect when they shop across channels ranging from TikTok to Amazon, according to the release. To do so, the platform synchronizes order, pricing and inventory data in real time across enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, third-party logistics (3PL), commerce platforms, marketplaces and stores, the release said. The platform also features an AI Order Operations Agent called Pippen that assists users with tasks like order routing, administration and exception handling, per the release. "By working with Pipe17, businesses can leverage the platform and AI innovations like Pippen to sell across channels with precision, greater agility and reduced operating costs, all while delivering exceptional customer experiences in today's dynamic market," the release said. About a third of United States consumers are Click-and-Mortar™ shoppers who choose experiences that work convenient digital features into the in-store shopping journey, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence report "2024 Global Digital Shopping Index: U.S. Edition." The report also found that 19% of U.S. consumers prefer to shop in stores with the assistance of digital technologies, 11% prefer to make purchases online for in-store pickup, and three-quarters want to be able to use their preferred payment methods. The lines between online and offline shopping continue to blur as direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands adopt omnichannel strategies that offer consumers a seamless experience across multiple touchpoints, PYMNTS reported in December.