Augment, an AI-driven logistics platform, announced Tuesday it has raised a $25 million seed funding round from 8VC. The company, founded by Harish Abbott, has created an “AI teammate”, Augie, designed to organize operations for logistics operations.
Abbott’s journey to founding Augment was deeply rooted in his experience in logistics and technology. The initial stages of his career at Amazon involved developing fulfillment software, which gave him critical insight into complex logistics networks. Abbott later co-founded Deliverr, a fulfillment platform designed to help small merchants compete with Amazon’s shipping capabilities. The company’s success culminated in a $2.1 billion acquisition by Shopify.
After exploring the potential of large language models, Abbott recognized that logistics professionals spend most of their work time handling routine tasks like email, phone calls and data entry.
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“These tasks are very tedious and cumbersome. So we started to think about creating an AI teammate that looks no different than a virtual employee. … You can text them, you can email them, you can call them, and it starts to take this mundane work off your plate so you can focus on what truly matters, like relationships, negotiations and routing,” Abbott told FreightWaves.
Augie, Augment’s flagship AI product, is built to do just that. Unlike traditional automation tools that perform single tasks, Augie integrates with transportation management systems and communication platforms such as Slack, Teams and email. It is capable of managing complex workflows across front- and back-office operations, communicating across multiple channels, escalating issues when human intervention is required and collaborating with human team members to enhance productivity.
“Our belief is that voice or email agents and other RPA [robotic process automation] tools are missing out on the big picture. Real work in this industry requires emails, calls, logging into multiple systems and sometimes collaborating with a person in finance or other departments. You need a solution that can take all this context and collaboration and get real work done. We are taking a very different approach with Augie. It is a teammate. It’s going to collaborate. It’s going to ask you when it needs help, it’s going to escalate when it needs to escalate,” he explained.
To develop Augie, Abbott and his team conducted extensive research, shadowing nearly 90 logistics professionals to fully understand the pain points and challenges they face daily.
“We partnered with Augment to build a multi-functional AI assistant, giving our team another tool to spend more time on value-added parts of their jobs and delivering a better experience to our partners. The Augment team has exceeded our expectations as a partner, shadowing our reps in house, learning the business, and building solutions that make sense for our operation,” said Matt Pyatt, founder and CEO of Arrive Logistics, in the news release.
With seed funding, Augment plans to accelerate the development of Augie and expand its engineering and customer success teams. The company’s immediate priorities include expanding its engineering teams in San Francisco and Toronto. Additionally, Augment will build a dedicated customer success team in Chicago to work closely with clients, refine Augie’s functionality and provide ongoing support.
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Justin Hall, who has experience at Primo Logistics, YRC and GlobalTranz, including a past executive-in-residence role at 8VC, has joined Augment as chief commercial officer to support the company’s growth strategy and partnership relations.
“After 25 years in logistics—running 3PLs, fleets and tech companies—I’ve seen so much waste in this industry drain time, crush morale and limit margins. That’s why we built Augie, an AI teammate that doesn’t just automate tasks but tackles complex workflows, while making data more accessible and actionable,” Hall told FreightWaves in an email.
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