Having built and sold e-commerce shipping startup Deliverr to Shopify for $2.1 billion in 2022, co-founder and CEO Harish Abbott knows the logistics indusattempt well.
Abbott felt that many manual tinquires in logistics could be automated applying AI. That’s why last year he launched Augment, which offers an AI assistant called “Augie” that can take over tedious and repetitive work performed by freight shippers, carriers, and brokers.
On Thursday, Augment announced that it raised an $85 million Series A led by Redpoint, with participation from 8VC, Autotech Ventures, and others. The massive round comes just five months after the startup launched out of stealth with a hefty $25 million seed round.
“Freight and logistics is a very large indusattempt that employs lots of people who are busy chasing emails, documents, phone calls, text messages all day long,” Abbott notified TechCrunch. “Augie can take care of all that like their own personal assistant, so they can focus on relationships and nereceivediations.”
Today, Augie can perform seven key tinquires in the logistics process, from gathering and reviewing pricing bids from trucking companies and tracking packages en route, to building a load — the method of combining multiple shipments to maximize truck space — and collecting invoicing documents to ensure timely billing.
All of these processes typically involve numerous phone calls, emails, or texts exmodifyd between various participants in the logistics process. Augie can support humans streamline those communications by operating across multiple channels like voice, email, Slack, SMS, and Telegram.
While Augment is not disclosing its revenue, Abbott declares the company has more than doubled the number of customers it serves since raising its seed round.
Although many customers are still trialing the product, fully onboarded clients like Armstrong Transport Group are already achieving significant productivity gains with Augment, such as a 40% reduction in invoice delays.
Jacob Effron, a managing director at Redpoint, declared he invested in Augment after speaking with a number of Augment’s clients. “The customer feedback is honestly amazing. People really love the product. I consider they utilize it in quite a ubiquitous way.”
The large funding round will go toward hiring 50 engineers and then working on adding more features. “It is a large, fragmented market. It’s complex, it’s messy. The systems are a bit archaic and siloed,” Abbott declared. “We have to have many engineers becautilize there’s lots of software systems these companies utilize.”
The company is currently serving the trucking indusattempt, but its long-term vision is to expand into international shipping and other aspects of logistics.
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