Augment's AI Assistant Augie Transforms Logistics with $85M Funding Boost

Harish Abbott, co-founder and CEO of Augment, has deep roots in the logistics industry, having previously built and sold e-commerce shipping startup Deliverr to Shopify for $2.1 billion in 2022. Recognizing the potential for automation, Abbott launched Augment last year to address manual tasks in logistics through AI.

Augment's flagship product is an AI assistant named Augie, designed to handle repetitive tasks for freight shippers, carriers, and brokers. On Thursday, the company announced an $85 million Series A funding round led by Redpoint, with participation from 8VC, Autotech Ventures, and others. This massive investment comes just five months after Augment emerged from stealth with a $25 million seed round.

Abbott explained, "Freight and logistics is a very large industry that employs lots of people who are busy chasing emails, documents, phone calls, text messages all day long. Augie can take care of all that like their own personal assistant, so they can focus on relationships and negotiations."

Currently, Augie performs seven key tasks in the logistics process, including gathering and reviewing pricing bids from trucking companies, tracking packages en route, building loads to maximize truck space, and collecting invoicing documents to ensure timely billing. These processes typically involve numerous communications across channels like voice, email, Slack, SMS, and Telegram, which Augie helps streamline.

Although Augment is not disclosing revenue, Abbott noted that the company has more than doubled its customer base since the seed round. Early adopters like Armstrong Transport Group are seeing significant productivity gains, such as a 40% reduction in invoice delays.

Jacob Effron, a managing director at Redpoint, shared his enthusiasm after speaking with clients: "The customer feedback is honestly amazing. People really love the product. I think they use it in quite a ubiquitous way."

The new funding will be used to hire 50 engineers and develop additional features. Abbott highlighted the challenges of the market: "It is a large, fragmented market. It's complex, it's messy. The systems are a bit archaic and siloed. We have to have many engineers because there's lots of software systems these companies use."

Augment is currently focused on the trucking industry but plans to expand into international shipping and other logistics areas. The company faces competition from other AI assistants like Vooma and FleetWorks, as well as investments from giants like FedEx and UPS in proprietary AI technology. However, Abbott remains confident, stating, "We have tremendous adoption. Augie does really cool stuff. Augie is really thinking ahead and reasoning like a human and acting on it, so it saves everybody a lot of time."