The phone in your hand crossed an ocean because somebody sat in an inbox at 2am, copying a container number from one screen into another.
So did your coffee. So did the chair you’re sitting in.
Thirty trillion dollars of global trade, held together by people doing the same thing over and over until they burn out and quit.
Every container, pallet and air waybill that crosses a border passes through a freight forwarder. The industry generates roughly $65bn in revenue in Europe alone, runs on net margins of 2–10%, and spends more than half its costs on people.
But the people are running out. Roughly three in four logistics employers say they cannot fill open roles, while more than 40% of shippers now factor AI capability into which forwarder they choose. Europe is the laggard: only around 6% of its logistics providers have scaled AI into core operations, against 31% in Asia-Pacific. The machinery of European trade has a massive productivity problem and a closing window to fix it.
5U AI gives forwarders the alternative workforce they cannot hire: agentic AI workers that handle quoting, bookings, shipment tracking, invoice reconciliation and data entry across air, sea and road freight. We led their oversubscribed $3.2m pre-seed round because one signal was impossible to ignore: everyone 5U pitched became customers, then kept asking to invest.
The work no software touches
Here’s what working in freight actually looks like. A forwarding operator works across two screens: the inbox on one, the transport management system (TMS) on the other. The job is moving information between them, all day.
TMS platforms such as CargoWise and Descartes are systems of record; they store shipment data. The labour happens around them:
- Quotes built from carrier rates scattered across portals and rate sheets
- Shipment status chased through email, phone and carrier websites
- Data extracted from bills of lading, air waybills and customs documents – PDFs, scans, multiple languages….
- Carrier invoices matched to agreed rates, one by one
Nothing was ever built to automate this layer. Until very recently, models couldn’t handle it and rule-based workflow automations constantly broke on the exceptions. But now, multi-agent systems can, and the pressure is on: Kuehne + Nagel announced up to 1,500 job cuts in late 2025 alongside heavy AI investment. When the biggest players start to move, the mid-market reads the signal.
The lesson of a $2bn mistake
The last venture wave tried to replace forwarders. Convoy, Flexport and Forto collectively burned more than $2bn on the digital-forwarder model, which broke on thin gross margins and working-capital intensity.
The forwarders won. The opportunity now is to arm them.
Labour is around 60% of the industry’s costs; automate the back office and the addressable spend is roughly $3.6bn in Europe and $13bn worldwide, by our analysis.
AI workers that keep tacit knowledge
TMS incumbents bolt AI onto systems of record built decades ago, inside software the work never lived in; the heavily funded US players are engineered for domestic brokerage – voice-first, single-language, no customs. Generic copilots hold no state, and forwarding is all state: which customer, which lane, which exception, remembered across a thousand email threads.
5U starts from the opposite end – resident in the workflow, trained on each forwarder’s own procedures, accumulating memory as it works.
5U’s AI workers operate inside the tools forwarders already use – Outlook, Teams, the TMS – rather than asking anyone to adopt another platform. They are trained on logistics workflows, including the exceptions that put forwarding beyond the reach of generic tools. The company is live with forwarders and carriers across Europe, including TCI International Logistics, where AI workers run across air and ocean freight operations.
Ultimately, the context layer is what won us over. As each AI worker operates, it records the reasoning behind every decision: what was done, why, and how to do it better next time. Yagiz Abik, founder and CEO, describes forwarding as full of decisions “trapped in inboxes, spreadsheets, and people’s heads” – most automation buries that knowledge deeper, but 5U captures it as it works, so a forwarder’s expertise stops retiring with its staff.
Why we’re backing Yagiz and Fehmi
Fehmi Sener researched multi-agent AI systems at TUM Munich and learned the industry from inside CEVA Logistics, a top-ten global forwarder. Yagiz Abik is a GTM machine who built the commercial engine from a standing start: cold calls and the DACH freight conference circuit. Behind them stand senior executives from DHL, GEODIS, DSV, Maersk and CEVA as backers – the people who run these operations, betting on how they change.
“Yagiz and Fehmi are absolute rockstars and genuine top 0.1% talent. No BS, just hard work and smart execution. It’s rare to see founders this early walking into an industry conference not knowing anyone and coming out best friends with every prospect and the event organiser – all of whom then want to invest and become customers. 5U takes an unglamorous, overlooked profession and gives the people in it better, more rewarding work. Excited to lead this round, and confident this team and mission will go very far. Watch this space!”
Mario, Emerge
The round will support product development and 5U AI’s European go-to-market programme.
