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AI allows K + N to confirm bookings in under two hours, compared with an industry average of 1 to 1.5 days. Shutterstock. com

DSV, K + N scale up investment to capture AI-driven productivity

By Greg Knowler and Mark Szakonyi

DSV and Kuehne + Nagel are investing billions in AIenabled initiatives as the world’ s two largest forwarders bet heavily on the massive productivity gains anticipated by deploying artificial intelligence at scale.

The investments are already allowing DSV and K + N to respond faster to disruption, generate more accurate bookings, offer more accurate and faster quotes and deploy agentic AI to repetitive tasks such as email follow-ups.

Having the ability to commit enormous human and financial resources to deploy AI initiatives across divisions and geographies gives the companies a significant competitive advantage over their smaller peers.

“ As we codevelop AI capabilities with key customers, the integration deepens with every transaction and creates switching costs that competitors cannot easily replicate,” Alireza Nemati, chief AI officer at K + N, told analysts during a second-quarter earnings call.

K + N’ s expansive AI strategy across the group will be built around a targeted workforce of over 25,000 whitecollar employees who the company says will“ absorb productivity gains.” In other words, AI will enable more business to be handled with the same level of workforce, rather than the technology causing a reduction in headcount.

The scale of the investment is enormous. K + N estimated the workforce cost base for the AI opportunity will

www. joc. com be about $ 2 billion and represents approximately 35 % of total staff costs.

The material AI productivity gains at K + N are only expected to emerge next year, but they are projected to generate annualized earnings before interest and taxes( EBIT) of up to $ 183 million by the end of 2027.

While DSV has not disclosed a standalone cost of implementing AI across its services, or the required headcount, it has forecast annual savings from AI and technology integration of $ 1.4 billion by 2030.

“ We are currently not 100 % sure how the cost development of AI services will continue.”

Despite the huge financial and workforce commitment required to roll out AI initiatives at an enterprise level, Markus Blanka-Graff, K + N’ s CFO, acknowledged the difficulty in assessing the monetary aspects of the widescale AI deployment across the key areas.

“ We are currently not 100 % sure how the cost development of AI services will continue into 2027, but this is something we will see as we go into the year,” he told analysts on the earnings call.

“ Our preference is growing the business, and we have assumed in our models that growing the business we would do at the current productivity and unit economics that we currently enjoy,” Blanka-Graff added.

October 5, 2026 | Journal of Commerce 27