Dave Clark

Dave Clark: Transforming Supply Chain Management with AI

In 2024, Clark founded Auger to build a universal operating system that unites digital supply chain tools. This innovation would allow companies to collect and organize data from a myriad of sources. “Auger is about creating a platform for all that data, normalizing it to help it make sense,” Clark explains. An overlying intelligence layer, powered by AI algorithms, will empower supply chain professionals to make faster, smarter decisions. “Right now, they have a lot of supply chain management tools, but no operating system. It’s like having a bunch of office products you can’t connect.”

Building an Einstein

When people think of AI today, many would imagine large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT. While an LLM is a powerful tool, it’s only as accurate as the dataset beneath it. “I think of an LLM like having your own personal, specialized Einstein sitting in your living room waiting for you to ask a question,” says Clark. “That sounds great, but first you have to build the Einstein.” The underlying dataset must be pure, clear, and structured. For most companies, obtaining and organizing data across multiple disconnected systems is the most challenging aspect of the journey. That’s where Auger comes in.

The company’s aim is to build a unified digital data platform for companies, then leverage agentic technology to automate and enable employees to ask the LLM the right questions, an art known as prompt engineering. The next challenge is engineering the data stack so companies do not have to run the full data set every time they ask a question, which is costly and uses significant energy.

Adaptive AI to Address Waste in the Supply Chain

Clark is currently focused on assembling a powerful team to build out Auger. The goal is a platform that’s intuitive and easy to use, unlike many enterprise software-as-a-service products. He wants to give organizations the ability to customize their operating system and user experience. Even that process, Clark says, will be partially automated using AI. Different customers want to see their data rendered in different ways because they have diverse optimizations, parameters, and goals. “The analytics side will be built by best-in-class engineering and supply chain talent and, when applied, able to adapt to each customer’s specific environment.”

Clark expects Auger to have its first products in customers’ hands within the next few months, and the company will scale up from there. His long-term goal? Getting most of the world’s supply chain running on the OS so enterprises can share needs and optimize real-world usage. “There’s so much waste in the supply chain,” Clark says. “If you can share the data and make things multi-tenant, where people can share a truck or a shipping container, you can reduce a lot of waste.” Much of that waste comes from product overproduction and from using energy to ship containers that aren’t full. “Maximizing efficiencies in supply chain will save costs for companies, reduce their risk exposure, and cut back on the global environmental impact of production.”

Rising to the Top of the Field

Clark’s background prepared him to take such a big leap into AI-powered supply chain management. Early on, he was drawn to leadership and teaching roles, and pursued a music education major as an undergraduate at Auburn University. “I enjoyed the whole pedagogical aspect of teaching,” says Clark. He worked as a seventh-grade band director for a year, leading about 250 students. “I had a fantastic time and loved it. Seeing kids go from not knowing how to play instruments to performing in a concert is still one of my top life experiences.”

While he enjoyed teaching, Clark quickly realized it wasn’t a long-term career fit. A family friend encouraged him to pursue an MBA, so Clark applied and was accepted to Haslam’s program. “I had a phenomenal experience at Haslam, and the rest is history.”

Clark homed in on supply chain management and analytics, spending much of his second year as an MBA student working on external projects with professors Mary Holcomb and Missie Bowers. Through those collaborations, he connected with Amazon, landing an interview and a job in 1999.

Clark spent the next 23 years at the e-commerce giant, aiding its growth from a company of less than $1 billion annual revenue to more than $450 billion in 2021. “I grew up with the company,” Clark says. “I got great advice early on from a mentor who told me to take the hard jobs that people don’t want, do well at them, and then you can progress rapidly.”

That advice worked. Clark advanced from an operations manager through the ranks to the role of CEO of consumer business, reporting directly to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Along the way, he managed a vast team of more than 1.5 million people and oversaw greater than $600 billion in gross merchandise sales. He launched and rapidly grew Amazon’s last-mile delivery efforts and developed a regional fulfillment model, which has since achieved record delivery speeds and saved the company billions. His experience at Amazon added substantially to his expertise as a supply chain problem-solver.

Parisa Sadrzadeh, a former colleague at Amazon, says Clark’s ability to see the big picture of supply chain strategy, along with his team-focused leadership, propelled him to become one of the world’s top supply chain professionals. “He knows the importance of elevating the talent around him. It’s not about having the spotlight on him, but how he can raise the tide for the people working with him—and in that, we all win. That kind of leadership has fostered incredible loyalty and stellar business outcomes.”

After more than two decades at the company, Clark left Amazon in 2022 to take a CEO position at Flexport, a San Francisco-based supply chain technology company. Clark led Flexport until 2023, substantially improving its operational precision and expanding the size and quality of its software development teams.

As Clark pushes forward with Auger, former Amazon colleague Olly Sloboda says he’s set up for success. “The future of supply chain is undoubtedly at the intersection of technology and operations, and Dave’s been inventing in that space at huge scale for over two decades. His success is built on an inherent understanding of both strategy and technology.”

Looking to the Future

Adrienne Wilhoit, who worked with Clark at Amazon, Flexport, and Auger, agrees. “I really think it is this unique blend of his visionary thinking, obsessing over customers, and building empowered teams that have been his key to success.”

Clark looks forward to applying AI to the field he’s grown to love, but he doesn’t see computers taking over the space. “I think you’ll see a lot of human-assisted AI for the near future,” he says. “It’s a powerful productivity enhancer, but I think the idea of sentient AI is a long way off.” At least for the near future, Clark believes the puzzle of AI is utilizing it to create value for people while minimizing computing costs. “The best leaders are the best at pulling information out of a team of people. In the same way, the best users of AI will be those who can extract the most value from the machine.”