Chicago-based supply chain intelligence platform Project44 has launched its AI Freight Procurement Agent, a new tool designed to automate carrier selection, rate benchmarking, and negotiations across multiple transportation modes. 

The agent is available within Project44’s Intelligent Transportation Management System (TMS) and aims to reduce manual sourcing work for procurement and transportation leaders.

The new agent aims to replace periodic bid cycles and spreadsheet-based negotiations with continuous, AI-driven sourcing that uses live market conditions and carrier performance data. It is designed to benchmark contracted rates against the market, identify lanes with potential savings, and autonomously launch digital mini-bids. 

According to a news release emailed by the company on Thursday, the agent can evaluate carriers based on cost, transit time, and service reliability, and then either recommend or execute awards based on configurable business rules. 

Early deployments have shown a 4.1 percent reduction in freight spend, up to a 75 percent reduction in sourcing cycle times, and a 70 percent reduction in manual coordination effort.

A boost to Project44’s TMS

This launch follows the August 2025 release of Project44’s Intelligent TMS, a modular, multi-modal system for freight management across FTL, LTL, ocean, air, and other modes. 

Project44 says its TMS has demonstrated results for early users, including a 17% increase in on-time performance and over 60% time saved on quoting carriers. The AI Freight Procurement Agent extends these capabilities into sourcing and rate optimization.

The technology operates on Project44’s logistics data graph, which connects over 259,000 carriers and processes data from 1.5 billion shipments annually across 186 countries. The platform validates and enriches carrier and lane performance data by processing more than 700 million logistics events daily.

“Freight procurement is one of the largest controllable cost drivers in the supply chain,” said Jett McCandless, founder and CEO of Project44, in the release. “The AI Freight Procurement Agent turns analytics into autonomous action within defined guardrails, delivering measurable savings while maintaining full control.”

Organizations can define the agent’s authority, including setting rate thresholds, carrier eligibility, and contract parameters. It can autonomously negotiate renewals within approved limits or provide scenario analysis and recommendations for human review. Customers can start with a recommendation-only mode to build trust in the system.

Growing revenue

Thursday’s announcement comes days after Project44 reported its first quarter of positive Operating Free Cash Flow and 48% year-over-year growth in new Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2026. For the full year, new ARR grew 24% year-over-year. 

The company attributes this growth to its focus on AI-driven solutions, noting that its AI Agent Orchestration system has already initiated nearly one million automated communications to carriers in the past year to resolve visibility gaps and improve data quality by up to 30%.

The AI Freight Procurement Agent will be available within the Intelligent Transportation Management System starting in March 2026.

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