THE INTERVIEW

Talking simulation standards for supply chains. CEO Jonathan Barrett discusses why now is the moment. 

With decades of experience across AI, analytics, and SaaS, Jonathan first saw the need for change while working on high-stakes military supply chains.

“We saw mission-critical decisions still being made in spreadsheets,” he says. “That’s when we knew something better had to exist.”

He founded Kallikor in 2024 to build that better alternative: a simulation platform designed for operators, not just data scientists, to test and optimise supply chain strategies in minutes, not months.

What exactly is Kallikor building, and why now? 

Kallikor’s Adaption is a composable simulation Digital Twin platform. Think of it as a digital twin engine for the entire supply chain: warehousing, logistics, inventory, labour, emissions. But what makes it different is how accessible it is. We’re taking what was traditionally the domain of specialist consultants and deep technical expertise, and putting it in the hands of business users.

Most planning tools answer narrow, isolated questions. Our approach is about scenario exploration: “What if there’s a new tariff? A port shut down? A carbon tax?” We let customers experiment and test those futures, and design for resilience, with probabilistic outcomes that give leaders confidence to act.

We saw the gap while working with global supply chains: critical decisions still rely on static, siloed legacy tools and spreadsheets not built for the pace, complexity, or volatility of today’s world.  Simulation is the natural language for system-level planning, but it’s been locked behind complex tooling. Kallikor puts it directly in the hands of those who run the operations, helping them move faster and make smarter calls, in days, not months.

How big is the opportunity, and what’s driving urgency among customers to act now?

The global simulation digital twin (SDT) market is set to grow from $35B to $379B by 2034. But the urgent need for it in supply chains is here now. Planning failures already cost businesses $1.77 trillion a year, and over 90% of leaders still rely on gut feel for critical decisions. That’s no longer sustainable.

We see the impact firsthand. One third-party logistics (3PL) provider previously lost £28 million in revenue and had to lay off staff, all because they couldn’t prove a 3% cost saving to their own customer. With Kallikor, they could’ve shown the exact impact. 

Most leaders fall into two camps: those defending share, and those chasing more of it. Either way, they need better foresight. Kallikor helps customers model multiple futures, not just optimise for the past. The ones who move now will lead on cost, resilience, and speed. The rest will be left catching up.

Many B2B founders obsess over product but the winners are the ones who master distribution. What’s your strategy for scaling growth in a complex, risk-averse market?

Our market is complex and volatile. Supply chains — the backbone of the global economy — are under unprecedented strain. The old model, built for stability and efficiency, is buckling under geopolitical tensions, labour shortages, inflation, and rising ESG targets. 

Businesses face competing pressures: move faster, improve service, boost resilience, and cut emissions. In these risk-averse markets, growth comes from trust. We build that by proving value quickly. Our Warehouse DesignLab drives fast, clear results, often within weeks, not months. That early success builds confidence to scale into broader, network-wide simulations, unlocking real transformation.

You’ve moved fast from team build to revenue traction in a tough vertical. What were the biggest unlocks in getting early customers to say yes?

The biggest unlocks were speed, clarity, and delivering real results fast. Early customers said yes because our platform is low-risk: no code, business-friendly, and easy to get started. This helped us avoid the long pilot cycles that often stall innovation.

A defining moment came when a customer used our simulation to support a board decision that delivered a £5 million EBITDA boost in under three weeks. That tangible impact built trust quickly.

We also position simulation as a transformation enabler, not just a tool, which shifts the conversation from ‘why’ to ‘how fast’, helping us gain traction in a tough vertical.

There’s a lot of noise in AI right now. How do you cut through it to build something that customers pay for and that investors believe in?

We focus on the impact of decisions. Adaption is designed to elevate operators, helping them ask better questions and simulate better answers. We’re embedding a system of agentic AIs, each with defined roles, to create checks and balances and avoid hallucinations. 

That’s what’s resonating with both customers and investors. We’re live in production, we’re generating revenue, and we’re solving a real operational pain point. Our AI doesn’t replace people but rather makes them stronger.

Why did you choose to build your next venture inside a venture builder like Improbable and what has that unlocked for you as a founder?

Choosing to build inside Improbable gives us access to expert support in finance, legal, and IT, freeing us from those distractions. This lets us focus fully on solving real customer challenges.

Improbable brings us velocity and world-class talent from day one, pushing us to stay focused and ambitious. That means more time with customers and less on admin. In a fast-moving market like ours, that edge is crucial.

What’s the long game for Kallikor? 

In five years, we want Kallikor to be the default environment where the world’s most important supply chain decisions get made, not in spreadsheets, not in slide decks, but in living simulations.

At its core, supply chain planning is really about design, and we’re giving companies the tools to experiment, adapt, and stay ahead. Personally, I want to see operators empowered by Kallikor to design adaptive, resilient systems confidently. The goal is supply chains that self-optimise, learning from past data to get smarter and faster.

What will surprise people about what you're building next?

Most people think of simulation as answering a question. But we’re building something that helps ask better ones.

The next evolution of Kallikor is about live, adaptive decision environments, where simulations evolve, agents collaborate, and decision-making becomes a continuous, intelligent process. It’s not something static or linear. It’s alive. And that’s what’s coming next.

Building something ambitious?

We work with founders solving complex problems in AI transformation, the metaverse and Web3 – the kind that don’t get built alone.