Amazon’s ex-retail boss Dave Clark launches new startup to solve supply chain ‘Franken-software’
Dave Clark
Dave Clark, Amazon‘s former CEO of global consumer, who briefly helmed logistics company Flexport, is returning to the startup world.
Clark on Tuesday launched a new venture, called Auger, which aims to help companies and governments combine the mishmash of “Franken-software” overseeing their supply chains into a single platform.
“At Flexport, I got to see all of these companies in the middle, like the Nikes or Lululemons, and I was amazed at how much of a struggle it is, and how much they still use Excel or Smartsheet or Tableau or something to bring all this disparate data together in such a way that they can do something,” Clark said in an interview. “A shocking amount of supply chain still runs on Excel.”
Clark’s third act follows a short but tumultuous stint at Flexport. Last September, Clark abruptly resigned as CEO of Flexport, allowing for the return of its founder Ryan Petersen. Petersen claimed repeatedly that Clark overspent and overhired during his time at the freight forwarding startup. But documents viewed by CNBC, and sources close to Clark, showed that Petersen and members of Flexport’s board helped implement decisions that Flexport has suggested were ill-advised. Petersen has since taken steps to turn around the business by overhauling its top ranks, implementing layoffs and subleasing excess warehouse space.
Prior to Flexport, Clark developed a storied reputation during his 23 years at Amazon as the architect of its mammoth logistics network. He joined Amazon’s operations division in 1999 and quickly rose through the ranks, becoming one of the most important executives at the company. In 2020, Amazon tapped Clark to head its core retail business after longtime executive Jeff Wilke left the company. Clark departed Amazon for Flexport in 2022.
Clark joined Flexport to bring what he had built at Amazon to “small businesses and other businesses around the world.” He left the startup feeling there was still a gap in the market for supply chain tools, and began to develop the idea behind Auger. The name is meant to convey the drilling tool’s ability to break through things and dive deep.
Robots transport goods to the employees in warehouse at Amazon fulfillment center in Eastvale on Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021.
the Riverside Press-enterprise | Medianews Group | Getty Images
“I spent the last year with the chance to really sort of step back and think about the best way to tackle this problem,” Clark said. “What do I want to do next? Do I still want to try to tackle this problem? Do I want to do something else? And I just kept coming back to, this should not be a problem for companies with the technology that exists in the world.”
He said a typical company might have “eight to ten to 12 to 20” systems for procurement, forecasting, and enterprise resource planning. The systems can be clunky and are rarely integrated. He wanted to build a platform where companies could manage their supply chain with the “same level of simplicity and intuitiveness as the consumer applications that they use every day.”
Clark, who moved with his family to Texas before leaving Amazon, has returned to his former employer’s backyard in Seattle to work on the new venture, which will be based in Bellevue, Washington. He hopes to pull from the area’s deep bench of tech talent.
Amazon last year rolled out its own supply chain management platform, which can handle the process of transporting businesses’ goods from the manufacturer to customers’ doorsteps. But the service is targeted at businesses that sell on Amazon’s marketplace and use its logistics and fulfillment network.
Auger’s launch comes as venture deal volume has steadily declined over the past few years, aside from investments in artificial intelligence companies. U.S. venture capital exit value this year is expected to reach $98 billion, down 86% from 2021, according to an Aug. 29 report from PitchBook, while venture-backed IPOs are expected to be at their lowest since 2016.
VC activity in the supply chain tech industry has shown recent improvement, although it’s well below the levels seen in 2021 and 2022. Global investment in the space hit $2.4 billion, marking the third straight quarter of growth, according to Pitchbook.
Auger has raised $100 million from venture firm Oak HC/FT. Clark said he soon expects to grow headcount to about 20 employees and intends to launch a “V1” product within nine months.
WATCH: Why Amazon is selling its cashierless tech to outsiders
Alexandr Wang, CEO of ScaleAI speaks on CNBC’s Squawk Box outside the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Jan. 23, 2025.
Gerry Miller | CNBC
Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang told employees in a memo on Thursday that he’s leaving for Meta, confirming reports from earlier in the week about his departure and a large investment from the social networking company.
Meta is pumping $14.3 billion into Scale AI as part of the deal, and will have a 49% stake in the artificial intelligence startup, but will not have any voting power, a Scale AI spokesperson said.
“As you’ve probably gathered from recent news, opportunities of this magnitude often come at a cost,” Wang wrote in the memo that he shared on X. “In this instance, that cost is my departure. It has been the absolute greatest pleasure of my life to serve as your CEO.”
Scale AI is promoting Jason Droege, the chief strategy officer, to the CEO role. Droege was previously a venture partner at Benchmark and an Uber vice president.
A small number of Scale AI employees will also join Meta as part of the agreement, Wang wrote.
A Meta spokesperson confirmed that the company has finalized its “strategic partnership and investment in Scale AI.
“As part of this, we will deepen the work we do together producing data for AI models and Alexandr Wang will join Meta to work on our superintelligence efforts,” the spokesperson said. “We will share more about this effort and the great people joining this team in the coming weeks.”
Meta’s big bet on Wang fits into CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s plans to bolster his company’s AI efforts amid fierce competition from OpenAI and Google-parent Alphabet. Zuckerberg has made AI his company’s top priority for 2025, but has grown increasingly frustrated with his team, particularly as Meta’s latest version of its flagship Llama AI models received a tepid response from developers, CNBC reported earlier this week.
Although Zuckerberg has traditionally placed long-standing employees into high-ranking position, he decided that the outsider Wang would be better suited to oversee AI initiatives deemed crucial for the company.
Scale AI counts a number of Meta rivals as customers, including Google, Microsoft and OpenAI. Meta is one of Scale AI’s biggest clients.
The Scale AI spokesperson said that Meta’s investment and hiring of Wang will not impact the startup’s customers, and that Meta will not be privy to any of its business information or data.
Larry Ellison, Oracle’s co-founder, chief technology officer and chairman, at right, and U.S. President Donald Trump share a laugh as Ellison uses a stool to stand on as he speaks during a news conference in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington on Jan. 21, 2025. Trump announced an investment in artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and took questions on a range of topics including his presidential pardons of Jan. 6 defendants, the war in Ukraine, cryptocurrencies and other topics.
Andrew Harnik | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Oracle shares soared 13% on Thursday to a record close, after the database software vendor issued robust earnings and a strong forecast, fueled by growth in cloud.
Revenue climbed 11% year over year during the fiscal fourth quarter to $15.9 billion, topping the $15.59 billion average estimate, according to LSEG. Adjusted earnings per share of $1.70 exceeded the average analyst estimate of $1.64.
“All told, ORCL has entered an entirely new wave of enterprise popularity that it has not seen since the Internet era in the late 90s,” Piper Sandler analysts wrote in a note to clients. The firm was one of several to lift its price target on the stock, raising its prediction to $190 from $130.
Oracle has been making headway in the cloud infrastructure market to challenge Amazon, Google and Microsoft. It’s still small by comparison, with $3 billion in cloud revenue during the May quarter, compared with over $12 billion for Google, which counts productivity software subscriptions and cloud infrastructure sales when reporting cloud metrics. But Oracle’s business is growing faster.
Future expansion can also come from sales of Oracle’s database on clouds other than its own.
“The growth rate in multi-cloud is astonishing,” Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison said on Wednesday’s conference call with analysts. “In other words, our database is now moving very rapidly to the cloud, I think because – a few reasons, because the database has now all these AI capabilities, but also, quite frankly, now people can get it in whatever cloud they want.”
Remaining performance obligations, a measurement of money that’s expected to be recognized as revenue in the future, sat at $138 billion, up 41% from a year earlier. Oracle CEO Safra Catz said RPO will likely more than double in the 2026 fiscal year, which ends in May 2026. Revenue for the new fiscal year should come in above $67 billion, she said. That’s higher than LSEG’s $65.18 billion consensus.
Gains from OpenAI’s Stargate artificial intelligence data center project, targeting $500 billion in investments over four years, are not yet included in forecasts.
“If Stargate turns out to be, everything is advertised, then we’ve understated our RPO growth,” Ellison said.
For fiscal 2029, revenue should be above the $104 billion target the company set in September, Catz said.
Still, the company faces the challenge of meeting client demand in cloud.
“Demand continues to dramatically outstrip supply,” Catz said, though she added that the company isn’t having trouble sourcing Nvidia graphics processing units.
Analysts at RBC, who recommend holding the stock, raised their price target to $195 to $145. But they noted that, “with the backdrop of continued capacity constraints, we struggle to see a path to meaningful acceleration in the near term.”
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