Altana Company Growth, Stability & Outlook

NEW YORK - July 29, 2024 - Altana today announced a $200 million Series C investment led by Thomas Tull’s US Innovative Technology Fund (USIT). The funding round included participation from March Capital, Generation Investment Management, Salesforce Ventures, Friends and Family Capital, and each of Altana’s key existing investors, including GV (Google Ventures), Activate Capital, Floating Point, and OMERS Ventures. The funding brings Altana’s valuation to $1 billion.

Over the past three years, governments have introduced thousands of trade restrictions, economic security, procurement, climate, and national security policies that seek to govern global value chains, reversing decades of trade liberalization. Businesses now must know and manage their global value chains, from the sourcing and processing of raw materials, through intermediate production and final assembly, to sale and end use. Until Altana, there was no way to know, connect, or manage across these extended networks beyond direct buyer-supplier relationships.

“Great power competition, climate change, and the breakdown of globalization are generational challenges that require a new model for managing global business, including a more assertive role for government,” said Evan Smith, CEO and co-founder of Altana. “The era of unbridled outsourcing is over. Our platform is uniquely suited to facilitate a new paradigm – organized around trusted global value chains. And this investor group is uniquely suited to accelerate our go-to-market efforts with both governments and enterprises globally. We couldn’t have better partners joining this mission.”

Changing tariffs and trade policies are setting off a race to build technology that can help companies navigate the complexity.

Trade technology provider Altana said Tuesday it is acquiring Cervo AI, an artificial-intelligence platform that automates the process of writing customs entries.

Altana uses AI to map supply chains and build a digital trade network where importers, suppliers, logistics providers and customs agencies can track risks and trade-compliance requirements. Its customers include logistics companies such as A.P . Moller-Maersk, government agencies such as U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and importers including Boston Scientific and L.L.Bean.

Altana said the deal for New York-based Cervo includes a combination of cash and equity and could be worth more than $100 million if certain performance milestones are reached. The company declined to disclose those milestones.

The deal comes as U.S. retailers and manufacturers navigate an increasingly complex trade environment.

The Trump administration has imposed higher tariffs over the past 18 months and ramped up efforts to crack down on evasion of tariffs and other trade regulations. Those changes and the end of the de minimis provision, which allowed for duty-free entry of goods valued at or below $800, have increased the number of imports requiring additional documentation and processing.

U.S. Customs has so far handled more than 63 million entry summaries for the current fiscal year that ends in September. That volume is already 27% higher than all of last year and up 65% from fiscal year 2024. More changes are on the horizon. Temporary U.S. tariffs implemented in

February are due to expire Friday. The U.S. recently declined to extend its trade pact with Mexico and Canada, setting up a decadelong review that could bring new tariffs or trade regulations.

Altana Chief Executive Evan Smith said the volatility is leading companies to look for ways to handle imports more efficiently.

“You have this explosion in complexity, and yet trade must move,” said Smith, who is also the company’s co-founder.

Smith said the acquisition of Cervo will create an end-to-end platform that can handle customs brokerage tasks from item classification through clearance.

Cindy Allen, chief executive of Trade Force Multiplier, an international trade and customs consulting firm, said importers and customs brokers are implementing more technology to help manage changing trade policy.

“The number of trade remedies and trade-related actions that have been implemented over the last 18 months has just quadrupled everyone’s work, and so companies are really struggling to keep up,” Allen said.

Logistics companies such as United Parcel Service, FedEx, DHL Group and Flexport have rolled out more AI in their customs brokerage operations to speed up the import entry process. Cervo, founded in 2024, created a platform that uses agentic AI to draft customs entries by extracting information off documents about imported goods, automating what was a time-consuming, manual task. 

Altana, which was founded in 2019, most recently raised $200 million in a Series C round in 2024 that valued the company at $1 billion. Cervo raised $5 million in seed funding last year.

The purchase of Cervo is Altana’s first acquisition. Smith said he is looking for more potential acquisitions that could add to Altana’s trade enforcement, facilitation and compliance offerings.

Cervo has 11 employees who are joining Altana’s workforce of roughly 300 as part of the deal.