Lightcone Podcast AI Is Eating Logistics
105 snips
Nov 14, 2025 
Ryan Petersen, Founder and CEO of Flexport, dives into how AI is revolutionizing logistics, a trillion-dollar industry. He highlights how AI optimizes shipping costs and speeds up trade, sharing insights on using LLMs to enhance workflows. Petersen discusses the innovative hackathons at Flexport that spark new AI projects and reveals a program training non-engineers in low-code AI skills. Additionally, he explains the potential for AI to lower freight costs significantly and improve customer engagement, while pondering the societal implications of automation.
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Scale And AI Drive Cheaper Shipping
- Logistics are extremely scale-driven so automation functions as a form of scale that lowers costs.
- Flexport projects AI will cut ocean container shipping prices by ~8–10% in coming years.
Use Incumbent Advantages For AI
- Incumbent companies should leverage their scale, domain experience, and distribution to win with AI.
- Build on your own tech stack so you can integrate AI widely instead of treating tech as a bought service.
Hackathons Became Product Pipeline
- Flexport hackathons became a pipeline for real AI products as most teams now use LLMs.
- Ryan schedules hackathons before roadmap planning so successful hacks can be budgeted into the product plan.
