In the retail sector, inventory planning would be essential to ensure margins and meet demands. However, with so many distribution channels, complex supply chains, and high-paced sales cycles, it has become difficult to do so. Fewer bullets are available in the hands of mid-market retailers and premium brands compared to their retail supergiants, which are based mainly on aged software.

Autone was founded in 2020 with a mission: to forecast demand, support sales while eliminating waste as well as manual tasks.

It has today secured a $17 million Series A funding round led by General Catalyst. The round also saw participation from other previous investors in the business. These investors include Speedinvest, YCombinator, Seedcamp, 2100VC, Motier, Financière Saint James, and angels from LVMH, Sephora, and Moncler. The total amount raised for the company now stands at $20 million. This comes after the company had raised a $3 million Seed round led by Speedinvest. Its competitors include Anaplan, BlueYonder and Relex.

Born and raised in Paris, Autone co-founder and CEO Adil Bouhdadi started dabbling in sneaker culture back in the early 2000s. Later, he sought a career in luxury fashion but had hardly any connections, so he decided to obsessively refresh the LVMH career website until an internship at Givenchy came up. He spent six months shadowing the CEO.

After his Masters's Degree in 2013, he had a break at Alexander Wang in New York, moved to Victoria Beckham in London, and then joined Alexander McQueen in 2015.

There, Bouhdadi and co-worker Harry Glucksmann-Cheslaw-now Autone CTOboth worked on an in-house inventory platform which, they say, helped the brands revenue increase massively over the next five years. The co-founders are a Muslim and Jewish pairing. Adil comes from a Muslim family his parents moved to Paris from Morocco and his co-founder comes from a Jewish family who moved to the UK to escape the Holocaust.

At Alexander McQueen we realized that everyone in the company was just literally using Excel, said Bouhdadi, now CEO. The biggest pain point for any retail company is that they all operate in silos. We created the alpha version to Autone there.

He says that it can now look at the product profile of a retail brand for the next 12 months: "You can buy raw materials in one month instead of three, minimize the risk from inventory and have a variable supply chain."

Companies like Courreges, Roberto Cavalli, Stussy, and Zadig&Voltaire are now amongst its customers.