# RELEX Oy

RELEX Oy is a Technology/Software based in Helsinki, Finland.

## Overview

- **Organization type:** Technology/Software
- **Headquarters:** Helsinki, Finland
- **Region:** Europe
- **Address:** Helsinki, Finland
- **Founded:** 2005
- **Assets under management:** Undisclosed
- **Website:** relexsolutions.com
- **LinkedIn:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/relexsolutions

## Regulatory record

- **Reports private funds:** No

## About

RELEX Oy started in 2005 when three Helsinki University of Technology researchers — Mikko Kärkkäinen, Michael Falck, and Johanna Småros — commercialized their academic work on retail demand forecasting. The company was bootstrapped for its first decade before taking venture backing from Summit Partners in 2015, then later from TCV and Blackstone Growth, turning the Finnish software firm into a rare European decacorn in the enterprise-resource-planning space. Its customer base now includes Dollar Tree, PetSmart, S Group, and the WHSmith travel-retail chain, which use RELEX's machine-learning models to reconcile promotions, perishable goods, and labor scheduling across thousands of store-SKU combinations. RELEX's platform bridges three interconnected asset-class activities: a live demand-forecasting engine, an inventory-replenishment system, and workforce-optimization software acquired via the 2024 Zenopt purchase. The firm operates exclusively as a software vendor — there is no RELEX fund, direct-investment vehicle, or co-investment club. Supply-chain AI is the sole product category. Geographic deployment is concentrated in the Nordics, the United Kingdom, and North America, with the US operations run from RELEX Solutions Inc. in Atlanta, Georgia. Customers typically pay multi-year SaaS subscriptions based on sales volumes, generating recurring revenue that the founders have publicly stated is approaching $300 million ARR (per Reuters, 2024). The company employs 2,000 people across 15 offices in Europe, North America, and Asia-Pacific. The three co-founders still control the board without having sold control to the 2022 growth-equity investors TCV and Blackstone Growth, a governance structure that keeps product direction in Helsinki. In April 2024, RELEX acquired Zenopt, a Finnish workforce-planning startup, to add store-labor scheduling to the core inventory platform (per the firm's official announcement, April 2024). There is no disclosed philanthropic foundation or family-office vehicle alongside the business. What separates RELEX architecturally from generic supply-chain SaaS firms is the specificity of its modeling engine: rather than running standard time-series forecasts, the software builds per-store, per-SKU in-memory models that factor in local weather, promotional lift, and shelf-life decay for fresh items — a technical moat developed in Finland's grocery sector where high-mix, low-volume reactive replenishment is the norm. The firm is privately held, does not disclose revenue, and remains majority-owned by the founding team alongside its institutional backers, giving it the capital-formation profile of a venture-backed company with the operational discipline of a founder-led, near-profitable enterprise-software asset.

## Sectors

- Enterprise Software
- AI/ML

## Offices

- Atlanta, GA, United States
- London, United Kingdom
- Munich, Germany
- Stockholm, Sweden
- Oslo, Norway
- Copenhagen, Denmark
- Paris, France
- Milan, Italy
- Madrid, Spain
- Krakow, Poland

## People

- Mikko Kärkkäinen — Co-founder and Group CEO
- Michael Falck — Co-founder
- Johanna Småros — Co-founder and Chief Sustainability Officer

## Questions

### Who runs investment decisions at RELEX?

RELEX is not an investment firm — it is a privately held enterprise-software company. Strategic and capital-allocation decisions are made by co-founder and Group CEO Mikko Kärkkäinen alongside the board, which includes representatives from growth-equity investors TCV and Blackstone Growth following the 2022 funding round (per Bloomberg, 2022).

### Does RELEX participate in fund commitments or direct deals?

No. RELEX does not commit to external funds, make venture investments, or operate a direct-deal program. Its capital deployment takes the form of organic product development and occasional strategic acquisitions, such as the 2024 purchase of workforce-planning startup Zenopt (per the firm, April 2024).

### Which sectors does RELEX explicitly avoid?

RELEX does not serve industries outside its supply-chain and retail-planning focus. It has explicitly avoided building horizontal enterprise-resource-planning tools for manufacturing, discrete logistics, or financial services, keeping its AI models tightly scoped to retail grocery, convenience, and specialty-hard-goods verticals.

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Last updated: 2026-06-03T20:00:00.000Z

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