Skip to content
HOMETECH DIRECTORYNEWS & DEVELOPMENTSRELOCATEEMPLOYERSNEIGHBORHOODSABOUTSchedule a Call

Optilogic

Optilogic is Don Hicks's second act after Llamasoft. Cosmic Frog is a cloud-native supply chain design platform. HQ Ann Arbor; customers include GM.

A2Hub Editorial· Rusty Roof Media· Updated May 4, 2026

Optilogic

Optilogic is Don Hicks's second act. Hicks founded Llamasoft in Ann Arbor in 2003, built it into the dominant brand in supply chain design and analytics over the next 17 years, and sold it to Coupa Software for approximately $1.5B in November 2020 in what remains one of the largest pure-software exits in Michigan history. Instead of retiring, he started Optilogic in 2018, anticipating that the next generation of supply chain design would need to be cloud-native, simulation-heavy, and accessible to a much wider analyst pool than Llamasoft's desktop-rooted product had ever served. The company's flagship platform, Cosmic Frog, is that bet productized. Optilogic operates from Ann Arbor, employs engineers and supply chain scientists pulled substantially from the Llamasoft alumni network, and counts GM among its customers. For Ann Arbor's tech ecosystem, Optilogic is proof that the Llamasoft talent pool did not disperse after the Coupa acquisition. A meaningful slice stayed in town and re-aggregated.

Quick facts

  • Founded: 2018
  • Founder: Don Hicks (founder of Llamasoft)
  • HQ: Ann Arbor, Michigan
  • Headcount: Multi-dozen; weighted toward supply chain engineering and software development
  • Funding: Multiple rounds of growth equity; total raised not publicly disclosed
  • Key investors: Beringea (lead, growth-stage)
  • Current leader: Don Hicks, CEO and founder
  • Sector tags: SaaS, supply chain, optimization, simulation, enterprise software
  • Careers: optilogic.com/careers
  • Website: optilogic.com
  • LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/optilogic-inc

What Optilogic makes

Optilogic's product portfolio centers on the Cosmic Frog platform, a cloud-native supply chain design environment built from the ground up for the way modern enterprises actually consume analytics. Three tightly coupled components make up the stack.

Cosmic Frog (network design and optimization). A browser-based supply chain design platform that lets analysts model networks (manufacturing plants, distribution centers, transportation lanes, suppliers, customers) and run optimization, simulation, and risk analysis against them. The differentiator versus legacy desktop-installed tools of the Llamasoft and LogicTools era is that Cosmic Frog is cloud-native, multi-user, integrates natively with enterprise data sources, and supports continuous usage rather than project-based deployments. Optilogic has leaned hard on a trifecta methodology that runs optimization, simulation, and risk analysis together on the same network model, so analysts can see not only the optimal design but also how it behaves under disruption and uncertainty.

Andromeda (data ingestion and management). The data layer that pulls supply chain data from enterprise systems (ERPs, TMS, WMS, data warehouses), cleans and reconciles it, and makes it available to Cosmic Frog and adjacent applications. This is the unglamorous part of the platform and the part that decides whether an enterprise deployment actually sticks.

Anaconda (analytics and reporting). The analytics and visualization layer for reporting on supply chain data and on design outputs back to operational stakeholders.

The platform competes directly with Coupa's supply chain design products (the legacy Llamasoft offerings, now sold under Coupa's brand), with Kinaxis and Blue Yonder on the broader supply chain planning side, and with adjacent enterprise analytics tools customers sometimes try to repurpose for network design. The customer pitch is cleaner architecture, faster time to value, and a usage model better suited to continuous supply chain design than the legacy project-based approach.

Customer concentration tilts toward large industrial and manufacturing operators with complex multi-tier supply chains. GM is a publicly referenced customer. The broader named base includes global manufacturers, retailers, and consumer goods companies that need to re-run network design as tariffs, energy prices, and demand patterns move.

The Ann Arbor story

The Optilogic story cannot be told without Llamasoft. Hicks founded Llamasoft in 2003 in Ann Arbor. The company spent the 2000s building a desktop supply chain design tool that shipped to Fortune 500 supply chain teams. Through the 2010s it grew into the dominant brand in the category. Coupa acquired Llamasoft for approximately $1.5B in November 2020; Coupa was subsequently taken private by Thoma Bravo in 2023 and still operates the supply chain product line as Coupa Supply Chain Design, retaining continued Ann Arbor presence.

Optilogic was founded in 2018, concurrent with the closing chapters of Llamasoft. Hicks's thesis was that the next cycle of supply chain design would need to be rebuilt from the ground up in the cloud, with a continuous-use model rather than project-based deployments, and with a data layer integrated into the enterprise's actual operational systems rather than fed by analyst-prepared spreadsheets. That is a hard thesis to validate from inside a company built around the prior paradigm. It needed a clean-sheet start, and Optilogic was it.

The founding team came largely from the Llamasoft alumni network. Many of the company's senior supply chain scientists, engineers, and product leaders had worked together at Llamasoft for years before Optilogic existed. That institutional memory is both the company's most significant asset and part of why it has been able to compress product development timelines that would otherwise take a full Series A cycle. The team knows exactly where the legacy product hurts, because they built it.

Ann Arbor is the right city for this company. The operations research and supply chain analytics talent base that Llamasoft built over 17 years did not fully disperse after the Coupa deal. A meaningful fraction stayed in town, and between Coupa's continuing Ann Arbor presence and Optilogic's growing team, the city remains an unusually deep market for the specific combination of optimization mathematics, simulation engineering, and enterprise software skills this category requires. For the broader SaaS exits pillar, Optilogic is a case study in how a major exit can leave behind a productive talent ecosystem rather than a diaspora.

Funding and exits

Optilogic has raised multiple rounds of growth equity. Beringea has been the lead investor across rounds. The company has not publicly disclosed its total raised or current revenue figures, which is not unusual for an enterprise software business focused on large industrial customers where individual contract sizes are substantial and the press cadence is deliberately lower than in consumer-facing SaaS.

Customer signal matters more than disclosed funding at this stage. GM is a publicly referenced customer. The company's broader customer list spans large industrial and manufacturing operators with complex multi-tier supply chains. For a software business this young, that customer base is the strongest signal that the cloud-native design thesis is finding real demand.

There has been no exit. Plausible strategic outcomes include expansion into adjacent supply chain planning categories (which would put Optilogic in direct competition with Kinaxis and Blue Yonder), continued independent growth, or acquisition by one of the major cloud data platforms looking for a vertical-specific supply chain layer. Current management posture reads as building for independent scale.

Culture and hiring

Optilogic hires supply chain scientists (operations research PhDs, simulation specialists, optimization modelers), full-stack software engineers, platform engineers, customer success engineers, and implementation consultants who know how to get a Fortune 500 supply chain data set clean. The work profile sits at the intersection of applied mathematics and enterprise software, which is a narrow and deep talent pool that Ann Arbor happens to have in unusual density because of Llamasoft.

Work model is hybrid with an Ann Arbor center of gravity. Compensation is competitive with growth-stage enterprise SaaS in the region. Equity is private-company stock with standard vesting. Public employee signal is limited in volume but trends positive on technical depth, peer quality, and mission clarity. The Llamasoft alumni network gives the company an unusually high rate of referral hiring relative to cold-market SaaS startups at the same stage.

Why they matter for Ann Arbor tech

Optilogic matters for two structural reasons. First, it is the cleanest example of an Ann Arbor founder using exit proceeds and accumulated network capital to start the next generation of company in the same domain, in the same city. That pattern, founder stays, founds again, hires the alumni, is what mature tech ecosystems run on. Optilogic is one of the short list of Ann Arbor cases that fits it cleanly. Second, the existence of two serious supply chain design platforms in Ann Arbor (Coupa's Llamasoft line, plus Optilogic's Cosmic Frog) keeps the talent market for this specialty deeper here than almost anywhere else in the United States. Supply chain design is not a glamour category. It is critical infrastructure for global manufacturing, and Ann Arbor sits at its center.

FAQ

Who founded Optilogic? Don Hicks, the founder of Llamasoft, founded Optilogic in 2018. Hicks built Llamasoft from 2003 until its acquisition by Coupa Software for approximately $1.5B in November 2020.

What does Optilogic make? Optilogic builds Cosmic Frog, a cloud-native supply chain design platform for modeling, optimizing, and simulating supply chain networks. Adjacent products Andromeda (data layer) and Anaconda (analytics) round out the platform.

Where is Optilogic headquartered? Optilogic is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The team is concentrated in the Ann Arbor area, with significant overlap with the Llamasoft alumni network.

Who are Optilogic's customers? Customers include GM and other large industrial and manufacturing operators with complex multi-tier supply chains. The platform is targeted at analysts and supply chain teams that need continuous design capability rather than one-off project tools.

How is Optilogic funded? Optilogic has raised multiple rounds of growth equity with Beringea as the lead investor. The total raised and revenue have not been publicly disclosed.

Who competes with Optilogic? On supply chain network design specifically, Optilogic competes with Coupa's legacy Llamasoft products, AIMMS, and anyDegree. On the broader supply chain planning side, the competitive frame includes Kinaxis, Blue Yonder, and o9. The positioning emphasizes continuous use, cloud-native architecture, and the combined optimization, simulation, and risk-analysis methodology Hicks spent two decades refining.

Related Ann Arbor SaaS and supply chain companies

  • Coupa (Llamasoft legacy) is the original supply chain design unicorn that Coupa acquired for $1.5B in 2020.
  • ArborMetrix is the Ann Arbor healthcare data analytics firm operating in a similar industry-specific data platform model.
  • Nutshell is the SMB CRM SaaS company that took the SMB-focused path through its 2022 acquisition by WebFX.
  • The Ann Arbor SaaS companies hub is the category directory.
  • The Ann Arbor SaaS exits pillar covers the major software acquisitions in the region, including Llamasoft.
  • The site homepage is the master directory.