Scaling Freight Sourcing with Project44's AI Agent
Project44 has launched the AI Freight Procurement Agent, a tool designed to automate carrier selection, rate benchmarking and negotiations across transportation modes.
The solution, built for procurement and transportation leaders, could reduce manual sourcing work whilst strengthening cost control and service performance.
The introduction of this technology represents a potential shift from reactive logistics to autonomous logistics.
According to Deloitte's 2025 Global Chief Procurement Officer (CPO) Survey, top-tier procurement organisations achieve 3.2x greater returns on AI investments than their peers.
For organisations buried in spreadsheets attempting to understand why carrier rates have increased whilst service levels have declined, project44's AI Freight Procurement Agent offers a different approach to freight procurement.
Operating within project44's Intelligent Transportation Management System, the agent replaces static bid cycles and spreadsheet-driven negotiations with continuous AI-enabled sourcing informed by live market conditions and carrier performance.
Continuous benchmarking and carrier evaluation
The AI Freight Procurement Agent operates within Intelligent Transportation Management, continuously benchmarking contracted rates against changing market rates and evaluating carrier performance by lane.
The agent selects carriers and ensures negotiated rates flow directly into execution, whilst shipment outcomes inform future sourcing decisions.
KPMG notes that supply chain disruption remains a top three risk for CEOs through 2026. Project44's AI Freight Procurement Agent addresses this challenge, with PwC suggesting that "agentic potential" could translate into a 4.1% reduction in freight spend and a 75% collapse in sourcing cycle times.
By automating rate benchmarking, mini-bids and renewal negotiations within defined parameters, the AI Freight Procurement Agent could help shippers secure competitive rates faster. Operating in parallel, the agent engages the market in seconds rather than hours, potentially capturing savings that manual workflows often miss.
The agent can benchmark contracted rates against current market conditions, identify lanes with savings opportunities, launch digital mini-bids autonomously, evaluate carriers across cost, transit time and service reliability, and recommend or execute awards based on configurable business rules.
Intelligence powered by logistics data
The AI Freight Procurement Agent operates on project44's logistics data graph, connecting more than 259,000 carriers and 1.5 billion shipments annually across 186 countries. The platform processes more than 700 million logistics events each day, continuously validating and enriching carrier and lane performance data.
The agent builds on project44's broader AI agent orchestration capabilities already operating across the platform. Dozens of AI agent use cases are embedded across the Decision Intelligence Platform, supporting core workflows across the supply chain.
"Freight procurement is one of the largest controllable cost drivers in the supply chain," says Jett McCandless, Founder and CEO of project44.
"Intelligent TMS laid the foundation for continuous optimisation. The AI Freight Procurement Agent turns analytics into autonomous action within defined guardrails, delivering measurable savings whilst maintaining full control."
In 2024, project44 agents initiated nearly one million automated carrier communications to resolve visibility gaps. The Freight Procurement Agent extends this Multi-Agent Orchestration architecture into sourcing and rate optimisation.
Governance and measurable outcomes
The AI Freight Procurement Agent operates within customer-defined policies and approval structures. Organisations determine the authority granted to the agent, including rate thresholds, carrier eligibility and contract parameters.
Within approved limits, the agent can autonomously negotiate renewals. For new carriers or expanded lanes, it provides scenario analysis and recommendations for procurement review.
All actions are auditable and supported by transparent data inputs. Customers can begin in recommendation-only mode and progressively expand automation as confidence is established.
Early deployments demonstrate a 4.1% reduction in freight spend through continuous benchmarking and carrier competition. Customers report up to a 75% reduction in sourcing cycle times and a 70% reduction in manual coordination effort.
Where traditional sourcing workflows move sequentially, the AI Freight Procurement Agent operates in parallel, potentially improving speed, consistency and service-level performance at scale.
