Helios AI CEO Francisco Martin-Rayo and Supply Change walked through what many procurement leaders are living every day: climate volatility, geopolitical shocks, and market disruptions are colliding faster than teams can react. Think of cocoa grown in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire facing extreme heat and drought, shipping routes being rerouted due to conflict, and contracts becoming meaningless when spot prices double.

Francisco's journey is unconventional: from studying radicalization in refugee camps in Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia, to starting an NGO providing university scholarships, to now working at the intersection of AI, climate risk, and food security as CEO of Helios AI. But is the thread connecting it all? Solving complex, urgent problems that affect real people.

This Thanksgiving, two of the season’s most recognizable ingredients—sweet potatoes and cranberries—tell a deeper story about climate, supply, and resilience. What appears to be a year of relative abundance at the retail level masks growing pressure beneath the surface. Our Helios Horizon data indicate that both crops are navigating climate-driven volatility, although the impacts manifest differently across regions and supply chains.

The global palm oil market is closing 2025 with a familiar story and a new twist. Prices are climbing again, but this time, the driver isn’t just global demand. It’s climate asymmetry: while Indonesia’s plantations are drying out, Malaysia’s are soaking up too much rain.

As pumpkin spice fills the air and Halloween candy lines the shelves, the season of comfort is here, and with it, a reminder of how global our small pleasures really are. The chocolate in your trick-or-treat bowl and the coffee in your Thanksgiving mug travel through some of the most climate-sensitive supply chains in the world.

This year’s Global Produce & Floral Show, hosted by the International Fresh Produce Association (IFPA) in Anaheim, offered a striking reflection of how the fresh-produce industry is evolving faster, broader, and more interconnected than ever.

From climate intelligence to faster decisions, Anuga 2025 showed how food leaders are making AI practical. Helios Horizon joins this shift, helping transform foresight into resilience across global supply chains.

On October 1, 2025, the U.S. federal government entered a shutdown after Congress failed to pass appropriations. As a result, the USDA has paused or delayed key agricultural data releases, creating a data blackout with significant consequences for procurement leaders, traders, and agri-food supply chains.

At World Agri-Tech 2025 in London, Helios AI CEO Francisco Martin-Rayo joined other global leaders to discuss climate-proof agriculture. The panel highlighted how AI, collaboration, and finance can transform global food supply chains. With climate volatility and disruptions rising, Helios Horizon empowers businesses to forecast prices, manage risks, and build resilience.

Fall is synonymous with pumpkins– from lattes to pies, or hayrides and Halloween displays. The Pacific Northwest pumpkin harvest of 2025 is off to a strong start, with growers optimistic about both the quality and supply of the vegetable. Yet, behind all the success lies a growing concern: the later part of the season doesn’t look nearly as stable.

In June 2025, Indonesia’s weather authority (BMKG) revised its seasonal forecast in a way that caught many in the agriculture sector by surprise. Instead of entering a long, dry stretch, the country has experienced higher-than-normal rainfall, delaying the onset of the dry season across most of the archipelago.

China’s retaliatory 34% tariff on U.S. farm goods stripped the U.S. soybean market of most of its competitiveness overnight. The market was devastated, and China quickly turned to a new supplier: Brazil. China's shift from the U.S. to Brazil for soybeans is increasingly looking less like a temporary substitution and more like a realignment in soybean trade, making Brazil China’s go-to producer for soybeans permanently.

Orange juice used to be a breakfast staple. Now, it’s starting to look more like champagne—a luxury item for special occasions. As climate change intensifies, Florida's orange market is caught in the turmoil thanks to citrus greening disease: a bacterial disease spread by tiny, sap-sucking insects called psyllids (pronounced sill-ids).

We’ve just launched a new feature on the Helios platform: the Price Seasonality tab! It’s designed to give procurement teams a sharper understanding of how commodity prices move throughout the year—and how those trends compare across multiple years.

In this episode of Becoming Radical, Michael Gaizutis sits down with Francisco Martin-Rayo, the founder of Helios AI, to talk about something we don’t often think about: how our food actually gets to us… and what happens when climate change and outdated tech threaten that process.

Tomatoes may be botanically a fruit, but in the U.S.–Mexico supply chain, they are a critical “vegetable” for procurement teams, and this summer, they’ve become a political flashpoint. In mid-July 2025, the collapse of the Tomato Suspension Agreement ended nearly thirty years of price stability in the import market and brought back a 17% U.S. tariff on fresh Mexican tomatoes.

Limes—the lemon's little brother—are a staple in many diets worldwide. Colombia is the 10th largest supplier in the world, producing about 2.29% of fresh limes globally. Colombia is prone to experiencing rainy and dry seasons; its rainy seasons are typically from March to May and September to November, but this year, the country’s rainy season is beginning earlier and more intensely, creating a riskier environment and potentially disrupting the growth and price of the fruit we all know and love.

Francisco Martin-Rayo, Co-Founder and CEO of AgTech startup Helios joins host Megan Thomas to discuss how his firm uses AI and large data sets to predict field, country, and global production of agricultural crops. This episode will break down how the team at Helios has built its tech stack, how it delivers meaningful insights, including predicted future pricing, to customers, and the surprising ways it is building buy-in with seasoned buyers and traders.