Manifest Vegas: Q&A with Reindeer AI's Yoav Naveh

The supply chain industry is currently saturated with AI promises, yet many enterprises find themselves stuck in the pilot purgatory of the past year.

As the hype settles, the focus has shifted from clean, laboratory-style automation to the gritty reality of the messy supply chain – where exceptions, shifting regulations, and changing products are the norm.

While many platforms struggle to move from demo to production, Reindeer is positioning itself as the architect for exception-heavy workflows. By building AI agents designed to evolve alongside the business, they are helping market leaders turn volatility into a competitive advantage.

We sat down with Yoav Naveh, Co-Founder and CEO of Reindeer, at Manifest Vegas to discuss why the industry struggled with AI adoption in 2025, the reality of change management, and why some human roles are set to be completely reimagined.

Could you tell us about the vision behind Reindeer and how you help enterprises build a cohesive AI strategy?

It was very clear to us that AI is going to make its way very quickly [into] every function in the enterprise.

We're really kind of curious about how you actually build a strategy. It's so noisy. There are so many different solutions out there and that's kind of how we got to start Reindeer.

We're an AI platform and we help enterprises build AI agents focusing on messy exception-heavy workflows. We build our agents that are not only able to automate tasks but actually stand throughout time as process change, as products change, as regulation change.

Looking back at the past year, many companies seemed to hit a wall when moving AI from pilot to production. Why do you think that is?

I think if you were to ask me last year, I would say I expected the industry to make much more progress implementing AI agents. But the reality is that getting to production – real, messy world examples – I think that's where a lot of companies were struggling in the past year.

We believe that the main reason for that is that once you get to production, you start getting exceptions, you start getting real-life examples and that's the area we focus on.

When people say AI automation, automation puts the spotlight on the least interesting part of the problem. It's all about change management, exception management.

You mentioned that the world is changing very quickly. What is the risk for companies that aren't prioritising this technology right now?

I think that we live in a really interesting point as this technology is so powerful and if you don't have someone in your organisation that is thinking, "how are we going to look in a few years' time? How is this going to change us?" then the reality is that even if you're a market leader, you're going to lose your position.

If you're not, this is really your opportunity.

Can you share a real-world example of how Reindeer is helping logistics leaders see immediate value?

One company that we're working with is Hellmann Worldwide Logistics, one of the largest freight forwarders. The approach we took with them is we started small, started giving an agent some basic understanding of the process. Within weeks, we got to a point that we're able to run and save a tremendous amount of time for their sales team.

The next step is to really do enterprise-wide transformation with AI. So, start with one workflow, but have the opportunity to expand very quickly to other departments and other areas.

As we look toward the future of the workforce, how should leaders be thinking about the roles within their organisations?

If you think about your AI strategy as a whole, you have to start looking at the type of roles in your organisation that you have to reimagine. There are certain roles that shouldn't be managed by people anymore.

I think the next 18 months are critical for organisations to figure that out.