Why We Are Excited to Invest in Vesper
Disrupting commodity intelligence markets with AI-powered decision support
I knew during that first meeting with Alexander Sterk, founder and CEO of Vesper, that what he’d accomplished in such a short time was truly exceptional.
In a span of 18 months, Alexander and the Vesper team have built a must-have agricultural commodity intelligence tool that is powered by AI, infused with deep domain knowledge, and already trusted by more than 2,000 global users. It felt like one of the best-kept secrets in the Dutch startup scene.
And we’re not the only ones excited about Vesper; we are thrilled to be joined by a group of internationally experienced co-investors.
Vesper operates in a growing global market ripe for disruption with the demand for commodity market intelligence expected to reach $4.9 billion by 2026. Launched in October 2019, they are disrupting this space by providing an independent and user-friendly single-source of truth for commodity market intelligence.
Vesper includes production and pricing information, news, and analyses of thousands of disparate data sources. By consolidating, linking, and elaborating on hundreds of pieces of market data in a single platform, Vesper helps users — traders, buyers, and sellers of agricultural commodities — to take accurate, near real-time decisions. Vesper is already trusted daily by Nestlé, Fonterra, Cargill, Unilever, Lactalis, and Danone.
Here are our top 3 reasons why we’re delighted to partner with Vesper:
1 The ultimate founder origin story: Vesper’s founder Alexander spent several years as a commodity trader — painfully aware of the limitations of the current solutions. His dream was to create an independent data and insights platform that traders, buyers, and sellers could all trust. That passion led him to build a truly transformative solution with Vesper.
2 Amazing product and market traction: By meeting a deep and latent need in the market through building a superb product, Vesper has been able to capture immediate commercial success. All the users that we spoke to love the product, calling it a game-changer, and they see Vesper as a trusted advisor. It is this laser-focus on user needs and ensuring user feedback is woven into product development that we love in early-stage ventures!
3 AI as a differentiator: Vesper combines the latest in data science and artificial intelligence with deep domain expertise. Machine learning is utilised in the data pipeline (e.g., disambiguating different data sources), forecasting (e.g., building an accurate prediction model), and decision support. Vesper already has the industry’s most advanced and complete data position, which will continue to strengthen exponentially through capturing additional learnings and feedback from the user base.
And the Vesper team has only gotten started! Through our partnership, we will support the Vesper leadership team to scale and grow their business into new markets and verticals and advance their AI roadmap.
Vesper fits Slimmer AI’s mission to apply AI to power people’s work — building products and ventures to help people make better decisions and do less routine work. It joins our growing venture portfolio, including Sentinels and Biller. You can learn more about the Slimmer AI venture studio approach via my recent blog post here or by visiting our website.
We are thrilled to partner with Vesper and welcome them to the Slimmer AI portfolio!
