freightmate Ai Raises $5M seed Round to Bring Freight Forwarding Into the Future

Thursday January 30, 2025: freightmate Ai announced today the successful close of a $5 million seed round, led by FUSE VC in a highly competitive funding process.  The funding will fuel the development of freightmate’s AI-powered software and services, designed to automate the tedious, time-consuming, and error-prone tasks freight forwarders face when managing global shipments. 

While freightmate currently focuses on automating specific workflows, its bold vision is to build the world’s most advanced and automated Freight Management System (FMS), powered by AI.  This next-generation FMS aims to autonomously handle 100% of freight operations, unlock zero-touch shipments, and require human input only for exceptional scenarios. By doing so, freightmate will enable operations teams to dedicate more time to sales and customer support, driving growth and enhancing client relationships.

Freightmate began its journey with Docmate, a flagship service that fully automates inbound shipping document processes, including digitization, validation, and data entry.  Docmate saves up to two hours of manual work per shipment and processes documents at up to 95% lower cost compared to manual methods. Demand for Docmate is nearly three times higher than planned, with SMBs, mid-market, and enterprise freight forwarders already partnering with freightmate, though freightmate is primarily focused on mid-market and enterprise customers. freightmate will announce additional automation services in the coming months.  To see Docmate in action, schedule a demo on the freightmate website or visit them at Manifest 2025 (February 11–12) at location K47 in the Innovation Zone.

Freight forwarding is a $220 billion industry, requiring forwarders to manage over 50 unique tasks, exchange more than 60 pages of documents, and communicate with up to 15 entities for each shipment. Despite these complexities, many leading FMS providers still rely on outdated, decades-old technology, with limited automation, ineffective collaboration tools, minimal data insights, and obsolete interfaces. Additionally, their architectures are too outdated to leverage the latest AI technologies effectively. These technical limitations lead to tedious and error-prone manual workflows for freight forwarders that are expensive to support.

“Freight forwarders are held back by outdated systems and manual processes that drain time and resources. Our vision is to change that- to build the world’s first truly autonomous Freight Management System that enables zero-touch shipments. We’re not just improving workflows; we’re redefining how freight forwarders operate, so they can focus on growth and delivering unparalleled value to their customers.” — Bryan Lacaillade, Co-founder & CEO of freightmate Ai.

“The freightmate.ai platform seamlessly captures, processes, and extracts key information from our documents, allowing us to focus on higher-value tasks rather than manual data entry. The integration is straightforward, and their team has been exceptional in providing support and customization to meet our specific needs. We highly recommend their services to any organization looking to harness the power of AI to transform their workflows.” -Rebecca Smith, CIO of Primary Freight Services.

“This was an easy decision - huge and complicated category, exceptional team, beautiful product, and more customer demand than capacity. Beyond excited to work Bryan, Rishab, Jason, and the entire freightmate team.” - Kellan Carter, Founding Partner at FUSE VC.

Behind freightmate’s vision are co-founders Bryan Lacaillade, Jason Zhao, and Rishab Gadroo, who have spent their entire careers in the logistics space building automation and AI-powered technologies at industry leaders like Amazon Global Logistics, Flexport, Geodis, and Manhattan Associates. 

If you’re a freight forwarder looking to transform your operations, connect with the freightmate team via their website (www.freightmate.ai) or meet them in person at Manifest 2025, location K47 in the Innovation Zone.