<- Back to ideas page

NomiAI

We help Mid-size Manufacturers turn real-time trade risk signals into financial exposure
Log in to vote
About this idea
Every mid-size U.S. manufacturer has the same blind spot: by the time their compliance team catches a tariff violation or sanctioned supplier, the purchase order is already signed. The damage is done — delayed shipments, frozen inventory, regulatory fines, and margins that disappear. The enterprise tools that exist — Coupa, Altana, Aravo — were built for Fortune 500 companies with dedicated compliance teams and seven-figure software budgets. The $150M–$500M manufacturer has neither. They're running compliance checks manually, usually in spreadsheets, usually after the fact. We conducted 180 discovery interviews with VP-level procurement and compliance officers at exactly these companies. The same answer came back every time: "We find out too late." NomiAI plugs directly into the procurement workflow and screens every purchase order in real time — against live tariff schedules, OFAC sanctions lists, and BIS export controls — before the buyer clicks commit. It's not a consultant. It's not a quarterly audit. It's an automated compliance gate that activates the moment a financial commitment is made. The result: manufacturers stop bleeding money on preventable mistakes. We flag the risk. They make an informed decision. The PO either gets modified, cancelled, or approved with full awareness. This is an $8.2B underserved market. We're the first purpose-built pre-PO solution for it.
Impact
The impact of NomiAI operates at three levels — the manufacturer, the supply chain, and the broader U.S. economy. At the manufacturer level, the impact is immediate and financial. A single missed tariff violation or sanctioned supplier can cost a mid-size manufacturer anywhere from $50,000 in delayed shipments to millions in regulatory fines. NomiAI eliminates that exposure by catching the risk before the purchase order is committed. For a manufacturer with a $200M annual procurement budget, even a 1% reduction in compliance-related losses translates to $2 million saved per year — recovered margin that goes directly back into operations, hiring, and growth. At the supply chain level, the impact is systemic. There are over 250,000 mid-size manufacturers in the United States. Most of them are making procurement decisions today without any real-time compliance infrastructure. NomiAI creates a new standard — where every purchase order is screened before it becomes a liability. Cleaner supply chains mean fewer disruptions, fewer emergency re-sourcing situations, and more predictable operations across entire industries. At the economic level, the impact is significant. U.S. trade compliance failures cost American businesses an estimated $30B+ annually. The manufacturers most vulnerable are not the Fortune 500 companies with legal departments — they are the mid-market backbone of American manufacturing. Protecting them means protecting jobs, domestic production capacity, and U.S. competitiveness in global trade. Beyond the numbers, NomiAI levels the playing field. Large corporations have always had access to compliance infrastructure. Mid-size manufacturers have not. We change that — making enterprise-grade trade compliance accessible, affordable, and automatic for the companies that need it most but have historically been ignored.
What I'll do with $5,000
$5,000 moves NomiAI from validated concept to live product. First, data infrastructure. NomiAI's real-time screening against tariff schedules, OFAC sanctions lists, and BIS export controls requires live trade compliance database access. This funding secures those API subscriptions — the backbone of everything we build. Second, our first paying pilots. We have a pipeline of manufacturers from 180 discovery interviews ready to test NomiAI in their procurement workflow. This funding covers onboarding 3–5 pilot customers and generating the ROI data that converts them into $80K annual subscriptions — and unlocks our pre-seed round. We are not asking for $5,000 to keep the lights on. We are asking for $5,000 to build the evidence that raises the next $500,000.
Quick Bio
Vasundhara Shelke. CMU senior, Law & Economics. University of Pennsylvania specialization. Founder & CEO of NomiAI. Builder. Problem solver. Just getting started.
Links

  • This Registration is for voting only.

  • Use this form to register to vote. In order to submit, you'll need to follow the process starting here.
  •  
    Strength indicator
  •  
  •  

This will close in 0 seconds