Half the supply chain AI companies from last year's conferences are gone. This industry eats the impatient.
But get it right and the compounding outgrows any move-fast-break-things playbook. Longer cycles, but stickier, deeper, and fewer competitors left standing.
Muvik's still here.
You know you're in the next era when you're mid-Atlantic, your customer reports a critical bug, your team is asleep, but you have Starlink and Claude Code so you just ship the fix at 35,000 feet.
We felt this at times while building Muvik.
Bad AI products and bad press made "AI" a word that got forwarders to have a preconceived perception before we even opened the demo.
So we refrain from mentioning it as much as possible. We talk about faster quotes, fewer phone calls, and going home at 5.
Then we let the pilot speak. By the time the word AI has to come up, they've already seen it work.
a lot of the world does not like AI right now
unfortunate because the last four to six weeks is when everything started to get good
apparent to me that you will win just by using it
eventually
I spent the last few weeks crowdsourcing the ultimate guide to London’s startup ecosystem. Here's why.
Finding your people is a lifelong mission- the people that push you, open doors for you, celebrate your wins, advise you sincerely and say yes to your crazy ideas. It’s one of the reasons people love San Francisco. Everyone is rooting for you and believes in you. There is a sense of wild ambition.
But is this something only unique to SF? What is/was London missing?
I think it really came down to a few things:
- Optimism
- A mindset of waiting for permission
- Lack of a catalyst
Those in the startup world would have felt a shift over the past couple of months that has instilled a renewed sense of optimism for Britain, a mentality of not waiting for anyone’s permission and the catalyst of the AI boom empowering a new generation of builders.
And surprisingly, this isn’t new for Britain. We made the jet engine, steam trains, discovered the structure of DNA, discovered gravity and so much more. There was no concept of permission.
The UK that exists today has:
- Anthropic, OpenAI and DeepMind all opening offices in Kings Cross
- Startups raising absurd rounds building generational companies (just 2 days ago Fractile raised a $220m Series B)
- Unmatched talent being pulled in from Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, UCL, Warwick, Kings and even European universities like ETH
So how can someone get involved and how can we level the playing field for those outside the startup ecosystem?
The guide friends and I created below is our small role in helping democratise some of the obscure information on the inner workings of London’s startup scene.
Read it, add to it, check it regularly and most importantly, do something with it. I hope this guide helps people for years to come.
Can’t wait to see what we do on top of all the infrastructure built by those before us. We’re truly standing on the shoulders of giants. 🔥
Link in comments.
Most brokers are about to learn that “we just arranged the load” isn’t a defense anymore.
We built Muvik for this. Our agents can vet every carrier on every load whether it’s FMCSA compliance, insurance, OOS rate, crash history, CSA BASICs all before a rate ever goes out.
Same competitive pricing. Auditable trail on every decision.
Negligent-hiring claims need to be answered with a paper trail. We can generate one automatically.
🚨 The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that federal law does not shield freight brokers from state negligence lawsuits when they hire unsafe trucking companies.
At NYU graduation this week, a TTS model was reading names onstage.
None of my CS classmates next to me noticed. I did.
At Muvik we obsess over this. When forwarders use our voice agents, the number of times the person on the other end asks “wait, am I talking to an AI?” needs to be a rounding error.
We scrutinize voice models most teams would happily ship. We’re not most teams.
Freight forwarders are the most underestimated business model in logistics.
Asset-light. Sticky. Recurring. Margins protected by relationships and chaos.
Now imagine that business with agents doing 70% of the back office.
That’s the company we’re building software for. It’s not easy but we’ve seen it be very doable with our customers.
TODAY: Amazon is opening its entire logistics network—freight, distribution, fulfillment, and parcel shipping capabilities—to every business, of all types and sizes. 📦
Amazon has built one of the most reliable and efficient supply chains on Earth. Now, Amazon Supply Chain Services gives all businesses access to the same infrastructure that moves, stores, and ships goods for hundreds of thousands of Amazon sellers.
Healthcare, automotive, manufacturing, retail, and more. Businesses across industries can now tap into Amazon's logistics network. Learn more here. ⬇️