Why We Invested in Lyric: The Brain of Global Supply Chain Resilience
Advanced modeling that turns data into actionable insights for supply chain teams.

Anyone who reads the news recognizes the brittle reality of global supply chains. But while supply chain shocks are a tale as old as time, the COVID-19 pandemic unleashed unprecedented, monumental challenges that catapulted supply chain vulnerabilities into the limelight. Global shipping costs soared, and Maersk, the world’s largest shipping company, saw its profitability grow by 4.7x in 2021, with gross margins tripling in the process. In the years since, supply chain operations have been continually challenged by natural disasters, labor strikes, and more.
Companies big and small face complex supply chain decisions day in and day out, but have historically been hindered by antiquated legacy technologies that slow their abilities to make nimble decisions and optimizations. The world of supply chain—both the operators and the end customers they serve—deserves more resilience, which is why we couldn’t be more excited to introduce Lyric and to announce its $23 million in seed funding we led alongside Permanent Capital. Lyric has reinvented the way companies model out complex predictions, decisions, and optimizations.
In the era of enterprise AI, domain-specific solutions will be mission-critical for certain categories, and supply chain is case in point: 70%+ of supply chain modeling decisions require deep expertise in operations research, meaning the science cannot be easily replicated by generalized data science platforms. The past few years have birthed a number of supply chain startups, but most of those challengers are point solutions focused on solving one particular facet of supply chain (e.g. demand forecasting) versus an end-to-end platform for transforming how the function is run.
When Zach Fredericks joined our team at Primary in early 2023 to help launch our Industrials practice, we were clear in our pursuit to find technologies that could reduce the complexity of building more resilient supply chains, but we also knew that truly category-defining companies would need founders with a clear right to win at the helm. When we met Ganesh Ramakrishna, the founder CEO of Lyric, in June 2023, both his vision and deep domain expertise immediately resonated.
Ganesh had previously spent seven years building Opex Analytics, a consulting firm that brought advanced data science to supply chain organizations. Opex was known for delivering bespoke data applications to help Fortune 500 clients optimize their operations. The company’s success was driven by its exceptionally talented team of data scientists, spread across the U.S. and India, and its stellar reputation within the operations research community. Ganesh eventually sold Opex to Llamasoft in 2019 (and Llamasoft ultimately went on to be acquired by Coupa a year later), but the challenges he encountered there laid the groundwork for what would become Lyric.
At Opex, Ganesh noticed a recurring theme across his customer work: Supply chain teams often lived in rigid planning tools, which were excellent for organizing data, but failed to provide flexibility for advanced custom modeling. These teams were data rich, but insight poor. When they needed customized solutions, they had to hire outside consultants to build them—projects that often took months or even years to deploy and cost millions of dollars. The result? A reactive, fragmented system incapable of helping Chief Supply Chain Officers proactively address disruptions or build long-term resilience.
Ganesh realized there was an untapped opportunity to democratize advanced modeling for supply chain teams. The next generation of operations researchers inside Fortune 500 companies had the technical skills to build custom applications tailored to their organization’s needs. While more than capable, they were hamstrung by a lack of resources and, particularly those needed to build models from scratch. Lyric was born to change that.
Lyric provides companies with dozens of powerful, pre-built supply chain models while also offering a studio for building and deploying custom applications on top of those models. It’s a game-changer for teams that have historically relied on expensive consultants or struggled to build solutions in-house. By empowering supply chain leaders with advanced modeling tools and AI, Lyric is giving them the ability to anticipate and respond to the shocks of modern commerce—whether it’s a pandemic, geopolitical conflict, or another unforeseen disruption.
We invested in Lyric because we believe it will become the brain of global supply chain resilience. The “Great Supply Chain Crisis” of the pandemic exposed just how fragile these systems can be, with devastating consequences for companies, employees, and consumers alike. These disruptions aren’t anomalies—they are the reality of modern global commerce. Companies need tools to optimize their risk exposure and develop proactive resilience strategies, and we believe Lyric is uniquely positioned to deliver those solutions.
Ganesh’s vision, coupled with his track record of execution and the amazing team supporting him, give us confidence that Lyric will redefine how supply chains operate in the face of uncertainty. We’re proud to partner with him and his team as they build the future of supply chain resilience.