SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION
AI IN LOGISTICS
Taking the action [ automatically ], I think, is next.”
Case study: Raft
Businesses commonly receive data in unstructured email form, so there had previously been few alternatives but to input the likes of invoices, bills of lading, customs clearance paperwork and other documents manually into their transportation management systems for processing.
Now, Raft’ s cloud-based platform deploys AI to extract information from freight forwarders’ various documentation
— such as emails, electronic data interchange and application programming interfaces— to complete tasks typically handled by humans.
“ Data extraction is a fundamental, but only small, part of Raft’ s service offering,” Mehta said.“ It’ s everything else after that gets you true end-to-end automation.
“ Whether it’ s AI or not doesn’ t matter. The customer doesn’ t care as long as the job is done. The reason it needs to be AI is that the problem is too complicated to solve [ otherwise ]. It is very messy, very unstructured. There’ s no advanced [ non-
AI ] computer program in the world that can solve this in any practical kind of way. We’ re not doing AI for the sake of AI.”
Raft’ s AI simplifies documentation, bookings and settlement workflows, such as freight rates and pay, so that clients can scale without a steep increase in costs.
“ There’ s still a big opportunity in front of us,” Mehta said.“ We’ ve done well with enterprise customers. We’ re working with a very large percentage of the top 10 to 20 freight forwarders. We have good coverage already, but there’ s plenty more that we can do.”
“ There’ s no way we will train a model that is better than OpenAI or Google. That’ s also not really the value that we bring.”
Raft first built and trained its own deep neural networks but has since migrated most of its work to third-party LLMs, another type of deep neural network.
“ There’ s no way we will train a model that is better than OpenAI or Google. That’ s also not really the value that we bring. The value that we bring is we’ re taking these things that are out there and making it usable for customers in the [ logistics ] space,” Mehta said.
“ We’ re experts [ at ] how we can do this at scale. We know how to construct the right prompts and model versions and all that kind of stuff. So, the fact that it is a third-party model or not is irrelevant,” he added.
Case study: Xeneta
Xeneta specializes in a complementary niche, providing real-time shipping intelligence to freight forwarders, carriers and shippers— usually large companies with complex supply chains.
This platform spans 170,000 port-toport combinations and 60,000 airport-toairport combinations, providing intel on approximately 700 million rates.
“ We are a freight intelligence platform,” Brocca said.“ Essentially, you can search any two ports in the world on our platform, and we’ ll tell you today’ s market rate [ according ] to different levels. We show if you’ re a larger shipper, this is what you’ re supposed to pay. If you’ re a smaller shipper, this is what you’ re supposed to pay.”
Xeneta aggregates and anonymizes data from hundreds of participating shippers and freight forwarders to calculate daily rates and make future forecasts. Companies are happy to provide such data because they themselves benefit from receiving access to this neutral, comprehensive data source.
“ Today, if you are a big shipper and you need a quote, you can ask and will get the price, but you will never know if that price is fair or not. You will never know if you can get a better price somewhere else or [ if ] you should pay more because this specific carrier gives
Ocean and air freight intelligence platform
Transforming freight procurement and logistics, Xeneta delivers accurate, independent data and ready-to-use intelligence. Global leaders such as Nestlé, Volvo and Coca-Cola rely on Xeneta to help them reduce freight costs and delays, strengthen supplier relationships, and improve contracting and service levels— enhancing overall supply chain resilience.
Delivered through data services, award-winning platforms and their expert team, Xeneta provides market insights; optimization reports’ and granular freight, service level and vessel data, which help businesses manage risk, plan more effectively and boost operational performance.
Xeneta AS is a privately held company with over 200 employees worldwide and is headquartered in Oslo, Norway. Visit www. xeneta. com.
46 Journal of Commerce | December 1, 2025 www. joc. com