Global trade has long run on paperwork. A single shipment can involve a buyer, a supplier, a freight forwarder, an ocean carrier, a trucking company, a customs broker, a bank and a warehouse. Each keeps its own records, and most still talk to one another by email, phone and spreadsheet. A missing document can hold a container at port for days; a misread invoice can trigger the wrong duty rate; a supplier that looked reliable on paper can turn out to be anything but.

That friction has become harder to tolerate. Tariff regimes have shifted repeatedly, compliance rules on forced labour and sanctions have tightened, and the shipping shocks of recent years taught importers that not knowing where their goods are is expensive. Into that gap has stepped a generation of technology companies trying to turn the machinery of trade into software. How they divide up the work says a great deal about where the industry is heading.

Digitising the forwarder: Flexport

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The best-known of them is Flexport. Founded in San Francisco in 2013 by Ryan Petersen, Flexport set out to build a freight forwarder that behaved like a software company. Instead of relying on a chain of intermediaries, customers book ocean, air and trucking capacity, file customs paperwork and track goods through one online dashboard.

The model became a symbol of the sector during the pandemic-era shipping crunch, when congested ports and soaring container rates pushed importers to demand better visibility. Flexport has since pushed beyond forwarding into fulfilment and e-commerce logistics, including a partnership with Shopify that brought its services to online merchants. Its trajectory shows both the promise and the difficulty of the category: freight is a cyclical, low-margin business, and software alone does not change that, but it can make the service far easier to buy and manage.

Turning shipments into data: project44

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Where Flexport moves freight, project44 focuses on knowing where it is. The Chicago-based company, founded in 2014, connects to carriers, terminals and telematics systems to give shippers a live view of goods moving by ocean, rail, road and air.

For a large manufacturer or retailer, that visibility is the difference between learning about a delay while a container is still at sea and learning about it when shelves are empty. It also feeds planning: if a company can predict arrival times more accurately, it can hold less safety stock and free up working capital. The approach reflects a broader shift in which shipment data is treated as an asset in its own right rather than a by-product of moving boxes.

Mapping who makes what: Altana

A third layer concerns trust and compliance. Altana, a New York-based company founded in 2018, builds an AI-assisted map of global supply chains that helps companies and government agencies see not only their suppliers, but their suppliers' suppliers.

That matters more each year. Import rules aimed at forced labour, export controls on sensitive technology and rapidly changing tariffs have made a product's full origin a legal question, not just a commercial one. Customs authorities and importers have both turned to software to trace components back through multiple tiers, flag risky entities and document compliance before goods reach the border.

Starting at the order: Portpine

The newest entrants are attacking the problem from the very beginning of a trade: finding a supplier and placing an order. Portpine, founded in 2025, describes itself as agentic procurement infrastructure, a single platform where buyers and suppliers meet to source, finance, ship and protect orders. Where earlier platforms started with freight or data, Portpine starts with the purchase itself and builds outward.

According to the company, its platform covers six stages of a cross-border order. Supplier discovery lets buyers find verified suppliers and compare pricing, minimum order quantities, certifications and lead times side by side. Procurement optimisation lets them upload invoices or requests for quotation and have AI analyse each line item and suggest lower-cost alternatives. Trade financing offers access to inventory financing and flexible payment terms, so buyers can keep working capital free. Logistics coordination handles ocean freight, air freight, drayage, warehousing and customs. Shipment visibility tracks every order, container and milestone. And supplier risk intelligence scores counterparties using fraud detection, compliance signals and resilience measures.

Its most distinctive feature is conversational. A buyer can describe a need in plain language, such as a large quantity of packaging delivered to a particular port and meeting a specific regulatory standard, and the assistant returns matching suppliers alongside landed costs, freight routes and financing options in a single answer. For a task that traditionally takes weeks of emails, quotes and follow-ups, compressing the first round into one exchange is a significant change.

The marketplace runs in both directions. Suppliers can list products and buyers can post requests, across categories that range from food and beverage, supplements and consumer goods to construction materials, medical supply, hospitality, electronics components, chemicals and personal care. Listings come from manufacturers across Asia, Europe and the Americas, from packaging makers in Vietnam to safety-footwear producers in Portugal and cement suppliers in Turkey.

Why small importers stand to gain

The appeal is clearest for small and mid-sized businesses. A large retailer can afford a procurement department, a team of freight specialists and long-standing banking relationships for trade finance. A growing brand importing its first few containers usually cannot. It may rely on a handful of suppliers found through personal contacts, pay upfront because it lacks credit terms, and learn about shipping problems only when goods fail to arrive.

Platforms that fold sourcing, financing, logistics and risk checks into one workflow lower the cost of buying internationally. They also reduce the number of handoffs, which is where most errors, delays and disputes begin. If AI agents can take on the repetitive work of comparing quotes, checking certifications and booking freight, buyers can spend their time on the decisions that matter: which supplier to trust, and how much to order.

The open questions

None of this is guaranteed to work at scale. Marketplaces live or die by liquidity, and they must attract enough serious buyers and verified suppliers at the same time. Trade finance carries real credit risk. And AI-generated recommendations are only as good as the data behind them, which in global supply chains is often incomplete.

There is also a structural question. The industry could consolidate around a few end-to-end platforms that handle everything from sourcing to delivery, or it could settle into specialised layers, with forwarding, visibility, compliance and procurement each served by different providers that exchange data with one another. Flexport, project44 and Altana have each built deep positions in one layer; companies such as Portpine are betting that the order itself is the natural place to bring them together.

What is already clear is the direction of travel. Flexport digitised the forwarder, project44 turned shipments into a live data feed, Altana made supply-chain origins searchable, and procurement platforms such as Portpine are pushing automation back to the moment a purchase is made. As tariffs, regulations and disruptions keep reshaping trade routes, the companies that turn paperwork into software are increasingly the ones deciding how goods cross borders.