Wednesday, November 11, 2026
The news that moves freight
Tech & AI Nov 11, 2026 · 7 min read

Freightos launches AI forwarder platform amid board fight

Freightos answers its founder with AI quoting, but the revenue line still has to follow

Freightos launched the next generation of its Freightos for Forwarders platform on 10 November, at 7:00 a.m. ET from Barcelona. The product links more than 75 air and ocean carriers and the 7LFreight trucking network. It puts rates, quoting, booking and market data in one place. Its headline feature is a set of AI agents. They take customer inquiries from several channels and turn them into quotes, applying each forwarder’s own rules and margins. The platform went live worldwide on launch day. Freightos did not publish a price.

Our view: this is a product launch and a boardroom move at the same time. Freightos’s founder, Zvi Schreiber, is trying to remove the company’s chairman at the December annual general meeting (AGM). His case is that the board backed the software business over the booking platform. Putting AI on top of the booking platform is the clearest answer management could give him. Whether it works will show in the revenue figures, not the press release.

What Freightos actually launched

The release, put out on PR Newswire, describes a shift from “digital workflows” to what it calls an AI-native freight network. Strip away the language and there are four parts.

First, AI quoting. Agents built into the platform read customer inquiries and produce quotes. They use the forwarder’s own rules and margins, not a generic markup. They also support booking with fewer manual steps.

Second, carrier connections. Forwarders can combine their own contract rates and business rules with live capacity from more than 75 air and ocean carriers, plus the 7LFreight trucking network.

Third, market data. The release cites Freightos Terminal, the company’s price benchmark service, as a source of market benchmarks inside the workflow.

Fourth, open APIs. An API (application programming interface) is a standard connection that lets other software talk to the platform. Forwarders can link Freightos to their TMS (transport management system) or ERP (enterprise resource planning software). They can also use Freightos as the data and booking engine behind their own AI projects.

CEO Pablo Pinillos put the pitch in one line: “AI is only as powerful as the data, connectivity, and workflows behind it.” He added: “AI becomes a true multiplier when built on strong carrier connectivity, reliable operational data, and proven workflow logic.”

That second sentence is the important one. Freightos is not claiming better AI than anyone else. It is claiming better plumbing: carrier links, live rates and booking rails that a forwarder’s own AI tool would otherwise have to build or rent.

The fight in the boardroom

Schreiber founded Freightos in 2012. He agreed to step down as CEO from 31 January 2026 and left the board on 28 February, FreightWaves reported. Pinillos, the former CFO, took over as CEO. Schreiber still holds about 6% of the shares.

He has submitted three resolutions, according to FreightWaves on 21 October. One would remove chairman Udo Lange as a director. One would end staggered board terms. Today directors serve three-year terms, so only some face election each year. He wants annual elections for all of them. The third is a nonbinding call for a chairman with experience scaling growth-stage tech companies and a return to platform growth. The board has agreed to put his proposals to shareholders at the December AGM, with the date still to be confirmed, FreightWaves said. But Schreiber says Freightos has refused to put the third, the strategy recommendation, to a vote. Freightos did not directly comment on that claim.

Schreiber’s argument is blunt. “It’s certainly not a personal thing, but the board has gone in the wrong direction,” he told FreightWaves, adding that it had “delivered very bad results for shareholders, and the chairman should take responsibility.” On strategy, he said: “To bet that company on solutions first, just when AI is really threatening it, I thought that was a very bad decision.”

His key line on AI is this: “AI can write software in minutes, but AI can’t go and negotiate with airlines around the world and build a network.”

Read the launch against that sentence. Management has now built AI on top of exactly the carrier network Schreiber says is the company’s real asset. In effect, it has adopted part of his argument while defending its own record.

In its statement to FreightWaves, Freightos said: “The Board and management remain fully focused on executing our operational strategy”. Earlier, Pinillos, then interim CEO, was quoted by STAT Trade Times saying “2026 is a transition year in which we are deliberately sequencing our growth.”

What the numbers say

The numbers split cleanly in two.

The platform is growing. On 15 October Freightos published early third-quarter figures. Transactions rose 15% year on year to 494,000, ahead of its own forecast of 481,000 to 490,000. Gross booking value, the total value of freight booked through the platform, rose 30% to $437 million. Freightos had forecast $390 million to $397 million. Active carriers reached 79, up from 75 in Q2. Unique buyer users were about 21,900, up from 21,100.

The company as a whole is barely growing. Second-quarter revenue was $7.7 million, up 3% year on year, FreightWaves reported. Platform revenue rose 19% to $2.9 million. Solutions revenue, the software and data side, fell 4% to $4.8 million. The adjusted EBITDA loss (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, excluding one-off items) narrowed to $2 million from $2.9 million. STAT Trade Times reported full-year guidance of 3% to 5% revenue growth.

The share price tells the rest. FreightWaves reported the stock fell about 78% over the year to 21 October, while the Nasdaq Composite rose about 16%. Bloomberg, via Transport Topics, reported a close of $1.27 on 8 September, against an intraday peak above $31 on the first day of trading in January 2023.

So the platform side is growing fast but remains the smaller revenue line. In 2025, solutions made up about 62% of revenue and the platform about 38%, FreightWaves reported. Growth of 30% in bookings does not move the total much while the bigger business shrinks.

What it means for forwarders

For a forwarder, the boardroom fight matters less than one question: does this save my desk time?

Quoting is still one of the most manual jobs in forwarding. A customer emails a request. Someone checks rates across carrier portals and contract sheets, adds a margin, and sends a price back. Pinillos framed the goal as helping forwarders “spend less time moving information between systems and more time serving customers.”

If the agents really apply your own margins and rules, the case is straightforward. You get AI quoting without building it, on top of carrier links many forwarders already use for air bookings. That puts Freightos in direct competition with in-house AI projects at mid-sized forwarders, and with the tools sold by TMS vendors.

There are three things we would check before signing up.

Price. The release gives none. A per-quote or per-booking fee changes the maths quickly on low-margin lanes.

Data. Feeding your margins and customer inquiries into a platform that also sells market data needs clear terms on who sees what.

Stability. A company in a public fight over its strategy may change product priorities after the vote. The open APIs reduce that risk. If your own systems hold the logic, switching later is easier.

The bigger trend is that booking networks are adding AI so they do not become pipes for someone else’s AI. A platform that owns the carrier links wants to be where the quote is made, not just where the booking lands. Expect other rate and booking platforms to make similar moves.

Our call

Freightos reports full third-quarter results on 23 November, before US markets open. Our prediction: platform revenue will grow more than 20% year on year, while total company revenue grows less than 10%. Bookings rose 30% in the quarter, so platform revenue should beat Q2’s 19%. But solutions revenue fell in Q2, and full-year guidance of 3% to 5% leaves little room for a jump in the total.

That result would give both sides ammunition going into the December vote. Management can point to platform momentum and a new AI product. Schreiber can point to a company still growing in single digits. For forwarders, the practical test comes sooner: within the next six weeks, Freightos should say what the new tools cost. Until it does, treat the launch as a demo, not a decision.

Sources

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