Inside o9 Solutions And The AI Systems Powering Modern Supply Chains

Mar 11, 2026

Dr. Ashwin Rao, EVP of AI and R&D at o9 Solutions and Stanford adjunct professor, blends math, Wall Street trading, and AI for supply chains. He discusses o9’s APEX approach for VUCA challenges. Topics include ML-driven demand forecasting, neurosymbolic AI combining neural and symbolic methods, reinforcement learning analogies, and overcoming data silos for practical deployment.

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ANECDOTE

From Abstract Math To Enterprise AI

Ashwin Rao moved from a PhD in abstract math to 15 years on Wall Street, then founded a company and joined Target before o9 Solutions.
He says each career pivot reused the same math and decision-making tools across finance, retail, and enterprise AI.

INSIGHT

Digital Brain Combines Old And New AI

o9 built a digital brain combining 15 years of forecasting, optimization, enterprise knowledge graphs and modern neural models.
Their APEX model makes planning agile, adaptive, and autonomous to combat VUCA in supply chains.

ANECDOTE

Bananas Make Demand Forecasting Concrete

Rao illustrates demand forecasting with a grocery example: predicting how many bananas a store should stock each day.
Models fuse internal sales patterns with external signals like weather, prices, social media, and real-time news to update orders same-day.

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How do global companies make confident decisions when supply chains are constantly disrupted by tariffs, geopolitical tension, shifting consumer demand, and unpredictable global events?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I sat down with Dr. Ashwin Rao, EVP of AI and R&D at o9 Solutions, to talk about how artificial intelligence is changing the way organizations plan, forecast, and respond to uncertainty. Ashwin brings a fascinating mix of experience to the conversation. After earning a PhD in mathematics and computer science, he spent fifteen years on Wall Street working on derivatives trading strategies at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley before moving into the world of enterprise technology. Today, he operates at the meeting point between business and academia as both a senior AI leader and an adjunct professor at Stanford University.

Our conversation begins with Ashwin's unusual career path and how those early experiences in finance shaped the way he thinks about risk, decision making, and real world AI deployment. The journey from theoretical mathematics to trading floors and eventually into Silicon Valley offers an interesting lens on how analytical thinking can travel across industries and still remain highly relevant.

We then move into the work happening at o9 Solutions, where AI is helping organizations make smarter decisions across supply chain planning, demand forecasting, and inventory management. In a world that Ashwin describes using the acronym VUCA, volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, businesses are under pressure to react faster and make better informed decisions. He explains how enterprise AI platforms can connect fragmented data across departments and create a more complete view of the business.

One example he shares brings the concept down to earth. Even predicting how many bananas a grocery store should stock on any given day requires analyzing internal sales trends alongside external signals such as weather, social media trends, and economic conditions. Machine learning systems can now process those signals in real time and continuously update forecasts so businesses can respond quickly to changes.

We also explore the rise of neuro- and symbolic AI, a concept Ashwin believes represents the next stage in enterprise decision-making. Rather than relying only on large language models, this approach blends the structured reasoning of symbolic systems with the pattern recognition of neural networks. The result, he suggests, feels less like a chatbot and more like having an expert coach embedded inside the decision-making process.

Along the way, we also discuss why many organizations still struggle to embed AI successfully. Technology is only one piece of the puzzle. Ashwin believes the toughest obstacle is organizational change management, bringing teams together, connecting data across silos, and helping leaders guide their organizations through transformation.

If you have ever wondered how AI moves beyond chatbots and into the systems that quietly power global supply chains, this conversation offers a thoughtful and practical perspective.

So, how prepared is your organization to make decisions in a world defined by volatility and uncertainty, and could AI become the trusted partner that helps guide those choices?

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