Breaking
Co-Founder & CEO, Nash

Mahmoud Ghulman

The man who studied the physics of light at MIT is now bending the physics of delivery — one AI agent at a time.

Founder MIT Physics YC S21 a16z-backed AI Logistics San Francisco
$29M
Total Raised
957
Cities Covered
140+
Team Members
Mahmoud Ghulman, Co-Founder and CEO of Nash
Mahmoud Ghulman - Nash CEO
>99%
Delivery Success Rate
20%
Cost Reduction
50%
Less Manual Work
52%
Monthly Rev Growth (peak)
Profile
Delivering at Scale,
Quietly

Every Walmart order that arrives in two hours. Every 7-Eleven delivery that shows up before your coffee gets cold. Somewhere in the logistics chain between "order placed" and "package dropped," there is a good chance Nash is orchestrating the move. And at the center of Nash is Mahmoud Ghulman - a physicist turned founder who has decided that last-mile delivery is, at its core, a computation problem.

Nash does not own trucks. It does not employ drivers. What it does is sit between any business and hundreds of delivery providers - connecting, routing, dispatching, rerouting, tracking, and resolving - via a single API. The analogy Ghulman reaches for is Stripe: the invisible layer that made payments frictionless for millions of merchants. Nash is attempting the same for the physical movement of goods.

"What we're doing for delivery is what Stripe has done for payments: we have built a simple API and workflow builder."
Mahmoud Ghulman, Co-Founder & CEO, Nash

Before Nash, there was Mozn - where Ghulman led business development on AI solutions for anti-money laundering, stock-market fraud, and credit scoring in the Gulf. Before Mozn, there was Arsann - his first startup, an on-demand gig-worker parking logistics company he founded and ran for three years in the region. Two companies. Two attempts to drag physical-world operations into the software era. By the time he co-founded Nash in San Francisco in 2021, the pattern was unmistakable.

Origin Story

Ghulman and his Nash co-founder, Aziz Alghunaim, first crossed paths at a high school science fair. Both went on to study at MIT. Alghunaim shipped code at Palantir and helped launch Tarjimly, a YC-backed refugee translation platform. Ghulman ran companies in logistics. A decade after that science fair, they built one together - and walked into Y Combinator's S21 batch.

The MIT years were not spent learning to code. Ghulman studied physics - conducting research across three separate laboratory groups. The Soljacic Group (photonics). The Grossman Group (solar energy). The Gedik Group (ultrafast spectroscopy). Each explored systems that move faster than human intuition can follow - exactly the kind of thinking required to orchestrate tens of thousands of simultaneous deliveries in real time.

Nash launched into the pandemic-era delivery boom and quickly became infrastructure for businesses that could not afford to build their own logistics operations. The pitch to small businesses was survival. The pitch to enterprise was optimization. Both worked. Monthly revenue grew at an average of 52% in the year before their Series A. Andreessen Horowitz, which had quietly led the seed round in late 2021, came back to lead the Series A in July 2022 - a $20M round that brought total funding to $27.8M.

"Over the past few years, my co-founders and I watched how consumers have come to expect incredibly fast, reliable delivery at an affordable price. This has created a landscape where medium and small businesses struggle to meet consumer demands due to the complexity and high cost associated with running and maintaining a last-mile delivery operation."
Mahmoud Ghulman

General Partner Andrew Chen of a16z put it simply: "Their unique model can be broadly applied to literally every vertical." That breadth is now visible in Nash's customer list: grocery chains like Ahold Delhaize, Coles, and Woolworths; convenience retail giant 7-Eleven; Walmart; Square. The platform covers 957 US cities and reaches 94% of the American population. Most people interacting with same-day delivery from a major retailer have no idea Nash is in the middle of it.

In 2025, Nash acquired Kosmo - a Singapore-based logistics platform - signaling that Ghulman's ambition is not contained by North America. "This acquisition reflects our commitment to building the logistics infrastructure for the internet," he said at the announcement, "and giving businesses - whether small or enterprise - the tools they need to scale last-mile delivery with confidence." The company now has footholds in Southeast Asia and Latin America.

Nash's current architecture revolves around what the company calls "Autonomic Logistics" - AI agents handling routing, dispatch, planning, and fleet management through what they describe as a "Context Fabric," a shared substrate beneath every delivery decision. The results the company publishes are striking: more than 99% delivery success rate, 20% reduction in delivery costs, and 50% reduction in manual intervention. Not metrics from a pitch deck. Metrics from customers with names on them.

Ghulman speaks at conferences on AI and logistics challenges. He posts infrequently but purposefully on LinkedIn and X. He runs a company of 140 people from San Francisco while managing a platform that moves millions of packages. The physics background shows up in how he frames the problem - not as a delivery challenge, but as a system optimization at enormous scale, where the right model, applied correctly, makes the chaos manageable.

In His Words
On Logistics, Scale & the Future

What we're doing for delivery is what Stripe has done for payments: we have built a simple API and workflow builder.

On Nash's Core Model

Medium and small businesses struggle to meet consumer demands due to the complexity and high cost associated with running and maintaining a last-mile delivery operation.

On the Market Gap

We became really interested in building a software and logistics solution that would allow any business to easily activate reliable local delivery by building custom workflows and tapping into a large network of delivery providers.

On Nash's Mission

This acquisition reflects our commitment to building the logistics infrastructure for the internet, and giving businesses - whether small or enterprise - the tools they need to scale last-mile delivery with confidence.

On Acquiring Kosmo, 2025
By the Numbers
The Platform He Built
Nash Platform Metrics
>99% Delivery Success Rate
957 US Cities Covered
94% US Population Reach
20% Delivery Cost Reduction
50% Reduction in Manual Work
52% Avg Monthly Rev Growth (peak yr)
Funding History
From YC to a16z
Seed Round  ·  Led by Andreessen Horowitz  ·  Late 2021 $7.8M
Series A  ·  Led by a16z + YC, Rackhouse, 640 Oxford  ·  Jul 2022 $20M
Total Funding $27.8M
Career Journey
A Decade Before Nash
Period Company Role What He Did
2012-2016 MIT Researcher Physics research across three lab groups: photonics, solar energy, and ultrafast spectroscopy
2016-2019 Arsann Co-Founder & CEO Built an on-demand gig-worker parking logistics startup; first attempt at software-izing physical logistics
2019-2021 Mozn Head of Business Development Scaled AI solutions for financial crime detection, stock-market fraud, and credit scoring
2021 Y Combinator Founder, S21 Batch Entered YC with Nash, secured early backing from a16z alongside YC investment
2021-Present Nash Co-Founder & CEO Building the AI logistics infrastructure layer for commerce - connecting businesses to delivery networks globally
Key Milestones
The Nash Timeline
2016
Graduated MIT with a BS in Physics; co-founded Arsann, a gig-economy parking logistics startup
2019
Joined Mozn as Head of Business Development; worked on AI for financial crime in Saudi Arabia
Early 2021
Co-founded Nash with MIT classmate and high school science fair friend Aziz Alghunaim
Summer 2021
Y Combinator S21 batch; $7.8M seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz
July 2022
$20M Series A led by a16z - total funding reaches $27.8M; team expansion begins across engineering and sales
2022-2023
Nash scales to enterprise: Walmart, 7-Eleven, Ahold Delhaize, Coles, Woolworths, Square join the platform
2024
Nash launches AI agent capabilities for autonomous delivery orchestration, routing, and customer support
2025
Acquired Kosmo (Singapore); expanded into Southeast Asia and Latin America; team reaches 140+
Defining Details
Five Things Worth Knowing
⚛️

His MIT physics research spanned nanofabrication, photonics, and condensed matter - disciplines built on understanding how systems behave under pressure at scale. Sound familiar?

🔬

Mahmoud and co-founder Aziz Alghunaim first met at a high school science fair. Both went to MIT. Both became repeat founders. They built Nash together a full decade later.

🗺️

Nash covers 957 US cities and reaches 94% of the American population - yet most consumers have never heard the name. Infrastructure tends to work that way.

🤖

Nash's AI cuts manual delivery intervention by 50%. Half the dispatching work that humans once did is now handled autonomously - and Ghulman is pushing that number further.

📈

The company grew from 25 employees at Series A to 140+ - nearly a 6x increase in headcount in under three years, while maintaining a >99% delivery success rate.

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