Helios Artificial Intelligence, a supply chain resilience specialist for the agri-food industry, has signed a deal to provide Walmart with its climate risk and price forecasting software after becoming the first-ever Walmart Open Call winner in the software category.  

Last year, Walmart held its 11th Annual Open Call event at its home office in Arkansas, US. Entrepreneurs from across the country pitched their products to representatives, hoping to land a spot on store shelves and online. More than 500 entrepreneurs were seleced to make their pitch, and Helios AI became the first software winner in the history of Open Call.

With more than 4,600 Walmart stores in the US and thousands of produced SKUs needed daily, maintaining a sustainable and uninterrupted supply chain is “a business imperative,” says the retailer. 

Helios created the first AI platform that predicts the price and availability of agricultural commodities using climate risk. With Helios’ platform, Walmart can evaluate the medium- and long- term climate risks facing its global agricultural supply chain to secure sustainable sourcing.   

“Walmart is leading the way when it comes to leveraging artificial intelligence to strengthen its supply chain,” says Francisco Martin-Rayo, co-founder and CEO of Helios. “Helios winning the ‘golden ticket’ is not only a great testament to our technology but also proof that there are urgent needs from procurement teams to climate-proof their supply chains — especially those at the most globalized levels.” 

Pushing the bounderies with price forecasting

Ahead of the partnership, Helios AI released a range of new features to empower agri-food procurement teams and supply chain managers to make even smarter, faster, and more informed decisions. 

Some of the key enhanced features include:

• Future climate risk predictions: The ability to provide climate risk and weather projections for an entire year into the future, helping customers estimate supply and prices more accurately.
• Historical pricing and price estimates for fruits and vegetables: Enterprise customers will be able to explore global, country, and regional averages and ranges, interact with prices by origin region or shipping point, and analyze prices by variety, grade, and organic status — all standardized to one unit of measure for easy comparison. 
• Customizable timeframes for charts and KPIs: Instead of pre-defined timeframes, customers can quickly change the timeframe of all their charts and KPIs. This allows them to choose any period they are interested in analyzing, starting at just one month and expanding up to two full years. 

Additionally, Helios’ customers will have access to new metrics for individual growing locations like days above 90°F, days below freezing, days with excessive rainfall, and more. These insights make it easier to determine if crops are getting enough chill days, facing a frost risk, or experiencing flooding in the fields.