New York–Flexport’s public introduction of its winter technology release could not have been more opportune, and one part of its timeliness wasn’t even known when the presentation took place. At a well-attended event in New York City late last month, with dimmed lighting and a setting more akin to a cocktail reception, Flexort CEO Ryan Peterson had an unexpected tailwind when he addressed the audience about the latest version of the company’s supply chain software: the Supreme Court rejection of President Donald Trump’s tariffs. That step suddenly made several features in the company’s latest release likely more valuable to its freight forwarding customers than they might have been had the court’s decision gone the other way.
S. and Israel launched its attack on Iran, followed by an Iranian counterattack, creating massive turmoil in international freight markets. The tools in the winter Flexport release thus got a little more valuable.
The radical shifts in some shipping routes as a result of the Middle East war were almost a perfect “value prop” for the first product Petersen introduced in his presentation: the Flexport Atlas. Atlas is the first new product cited The Atlas, like all the services introduced at the New York event, has no cost. Additionally, the Atlas is available to non-users of the Flexport system and can be accessed here.
It’s based on data Flexport already has for use by its customers monitoring the status of their shipments. “This is our first attempt to really bring that to the surface and allow you to see how the world’s ocean network actually functions,” Petersen said. As Petersen described it, Flexport Atlas allows its users to “zoom in on any port and see what’s happening.
What are the terminals? What are the ships that are coming and going to this port? ” The list continued from there.
While Flexport Atlas may not have seemed as valuable during the presentation as now, because the Middle East war was still more than a week away, several other features rolled out in the Flexport system (all are no-cost additions) were more immediately important coming so soon after the Supreme Court tariff decision. As with any presentation today about technology changes, AI was never far from the discussion. Tariffs tools: Petersen had spoken for a while before mentioning tariffs, “which is pretty crazy given the Supreme Court ruling,” he said.
The court invalidated the Trump administration tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). S. Customs.
” The tool is available online to non-Flexport customers. The changes wrought by the Supreme Court decision on tariffs, which came down on a Friday, had been built into the tariff simulator by Monday, Petersen said. “We have that commitment to always keep this up to date and accurate,” he said.
S. Customs and Border Protection. The next logical step, given all that has occurred with tariffs, is a refund calculator.
Flexport’s product to calculate refunds had been in development when the Supreme Court decision came down, Petersen said. ” But that doesn’t mean the question of refunds will be easy. “Don’t get too excited, don’t start spending that money,” Petersen said.
” Even if the tool is simple, he said, calculating refunds is not simple. “But that’s what this tool is about,” Petersen said. “Your CFO is going to love it to show them what might be coming.
Flexport Digital Routing Guide: Petersen described current routing guides as “simply taking two different port pairs and saying, OK, when I have a container going between those ports, which carrier should ship it? ” He described the system as “dumb and static. ” The digital routing guide will use agentic AI to answer the question of “how do you want your container to move?
” The product’s real time algorithms will assign the containers to a ship based on those customer desires, Petersen said. ” The latest AI features within the search engine is “much more powerful in terms of using natural language to search,” he said. He said the tool is live for some customers now but will be rolled out to the universe of Flexport’s clients in the coming weeks.
” Translation service: “For the last 200 years or so, English has been the language of global trade, and today we’re introducing live translation because there’s billions of people around the who world who don’t speak English,” Petersen said. ” Languages available in the new tools are Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, Italian, German and Spanish. That range of languages should take care of about 86% of container trade, Petersen added.
TikTok tie-in: Flexport now services about a million orders per year for TikTok merchants, Petersen said. ” The end consumers of the products will be able to get live tracking updates inside the TikTok app, he said.
