Story originally appeared in Business Insider on Dec. 7, 2020. Excerpts from the story below. To see the full story visit BusinessInsider.com.

2. Blue Yonder
URL: https://blueyonder.com/
HQ: Scottsdale, AZ
Total funding: $75 million, according to Crunchbase
Retailers: Petco, L.L. Bean, Walgreens, and Albertsons

The rebranded Blue Yonder, formerly JDA, developed its pricing tools over a decade ago as an AI-driven startup. 

« Blue Yonder uses data to understand how customers are likely to behave and what the impact of price can do to inventory levels, » said Michael Orr, AI solutions director at Blue Yonder, which boasted $61 million in revenue for its SaaS pricing solutions in Q2 2019, an increase of 81% year over year. « This helps retailers avoid the classic conundrum: Price too high and drive customers away, price too low and lose valuable margin. » 

Price elasticity, or the measure of how the marketplace reacts to a price change for a given product, is not static, he pointed out, particularly in the COVID-19 era as customers adjust and shop in different ways. « Consider spiced wine, which clearly varies in demand and price elasticity during the year, » he said. « A 10%-off promotion in summer would produce significantly different behaviors in customers in December than August, and shoppers between cold climate and warm climates. »