[Disclosure: AgFunderNews’ parent company AgFunder is an investor in Lumi AI.]
In companies that rely on ERP systems a la Oracle or SAP, the average business user can’t simply dive into the data and extract immediate insights. That process is often long and manual, and requires data teams fluent in Python or SQL.
Ibrahim Ashqar and Tudor Boiangiu founded Lumi AI in order to change this and, as they put it, “democratize access to intelligence and transform decision-making at scale.”
The company’s plain-language interface integrates with supply chain software, acting as an intelligent assistant for interpreting data on the fly. For CPGs and food retailers, which operate complex supply chains and store vast amounts of data, the technology could go far in analyzing inventory and sales history, procurement history, customers, vendors, and other data in order to find better efficiencies and ROI.
Lumi, founded in 2023, already counts supermarket giant Kroger and agricultural collective Growmark among its customers, along with multiple food manufacturers.
“We are no longer testing whether this works,” says Ashqar. “We are scaling a model that already does.”
Ashqar spoke to AgFunder recently as part of the latter’s 2026 Global AgriFoodTech Investment report.
AgFunderNews (AFN): What challenge(s) does Lumi AI solve?
Ibrahim Ashqar (IA): Despite millions invested in dashboards and data infrastructure, business teams remain constrained by predefined views of their operations. Non-obvious risks, inefficiencies, and value drivers go undiscovered because no one knows to look for them.
By combining enterprise-grade security, rich business context, and agentic workflows, Lumi lets teams ask plain-language questions and autonomously surfaces insights that traditional BI tools miss.
Mid-to-large enterprises, including global retailers and consulting partners, use Lumi in production to uncover multi-million-dollar opportunities across sales, procurement, and supply chain operations.
AFN: For food retailers and CPGs specifically, what benefits does this technology bring that weren’t possible before?
IA: By eliminating manual analytic processes, Lumi AI allows organizations to:
- Instantly uncover hidden value: Find insights that drive financial results within seconds.
- Boost productivity: Make better, faster data-driven decisions.
- Reduce time to insights: Automate data analysis and insight extraction.
- Free up technical teams: Redirect focus from ad-hoc requests to strategic initiatives.
- Save on hiring costs: Produce more analytics without needing to hire.
AFN: Are there other areas of food and agriculture for which this tech could also make a positive impact?
IA: Any sector that contains large quantities of operational ERP-based data (sales, inventory, procurement, supply chain) derived from systems like SAP, Oracle, MS Dynamics is in a great position to leverage an agentic analytics solution like Lumi AI for autonomous insight extraction.
AFN: What were your highlights of 2025?
IA: We closed our $3.7 million seed round and assembled a senior team across engineering and GTM [go-to market]. We deployed Lumi in production with paying Fortune 100 enterprises and consulting partners, using deep, structured feedback loops to materially accelerate product iteration.
Also, we uncovered more than $150 million in quantified client value, with referenceable case studies and testimonials available, in addition to built repeatable, non-founder-led pipeline generation through sales and marketing automation and improved conversion.
Finally, we established channel partnerships with leading global consulting firms including Deloitte and Genpact, delivering client implementations and serving as a core distribution channel.
AFN: What were the challenges?
IA: For much of FY25, constrained bandwidth forced a tradeoff between executing on signed enterprise contracts and building top-of-funnel demand. As a result, our operating cadence alternated between delivery and pipeline generation rather than running both in parallel.
This dynamic slowed overall velocity, particularly in Q4, where deal timing was further impacted by the holiday season and elongated enterprise buying cycles.
AFN: Plans for 2026?
IA: 2026 is about scaling with intent.
Our bottom-of-funnel pipeline includes highly recognizable enterprise logos expected to convert in the near term, while top-of-funnel growth is increasingly driven by durable, repeatable GTM infrastructure rather than founder-led effort.
On the product side, upcoming capabilities such as self-service, private tenants, and flexible data hosting expand both TAM [total addressable market] and ACVs [annual contract values]. In parallel, we are introducing the next wave of innovation with proactive autonomous insights and alerting, extending Lumi beyond analytics toward execution.
We are no longer testing whether this works. We are scaling a model that already does.
For investors who can help accelerate distribution, partnerships, and category leadership as this compounds, we are actively engaging in conversations.
AFN: One line of advice for other startups
IA: Focus on solving real, important problems and always anchor success in driving tangible results for your clients.
