Timefold
Timefold, a Belgian startup that uses AI to help businesses create operational plans such as employee shift scheduling, has raised $6.7 million in funding.
Based in Ghent, Belgium, Timefold's cofounder believes that major industries like transport, logistics, and supply chain businesses can all improve their complex infrastructure.
"Planning is everywhere and often hidden in plain sight, yet efficient schedules are rare," Geoffrey De Smet, CTO and cofounder of Timefold, said in an announcement. "From the field service technician coming to fix your boiler to the plane assigned to your next flight, schedules run the world. We are tackling complex planning problems by providing out-of-the-box planning models for IT teams to run, test, and configure easily."
Timefold develops software that analyses a business's data and, using a proprietary algorithm based on the open-source OptaPlanner project, provides it with a planning model. The startup says it can solve problems such as last-mile delivery routing and maintenance scheduling. According to the startup's pitch deck, Timefold works with companies like Deutsche Bahn and Palantir.
"There's a whole middle ground where existing solutions don't fit, so our platform is broader, and we've created a system which is extendable," Frederik Demets, Timefold's CCO, told Business Insider in an interview. He added that while it's AI, it's not a large language model or machine learning algorithm. Instead, Timefold feeds its platform "the constraints and data, and it uses heuristics to give solutions."
VC firm Lakestar led Timefold's raise alongside existing investor Smartfin. Funding will go towards growing the company's platform and marketing spend as it looks to increase its headcount to around 40 staff this year.
Check out Timefold's 15-slide pitch deck below:
