Harish Abbott, who previously co-founded and sold e-commerce shipping startup Deliverr to Shopify for $2.1 billion, is back with a new bet on logistics. Last year, he launched Augment, an AI-powered platform that automates repetitive work for freight shippers, carriers, and brokers through its assistant, “Augie.”
On Thursday, Augment announced an $85 million Series A round led by Redpoint, with participation from 8VC, Autotech Ventures, and others. The raise comes just five months after the company exited stealth with a $25 million seed round.
“Freight and logistics is a very large industry that employs lots of people who are busy chasing emails, documents, phone calls, text messages all day long,” Abbott told TechCrunch. “Augie can take care of all that like their own personal assistant, so they can focus on relationships and negotiations.”
Currently, Augie supports seven core logistics tasks, including:
- Gathering and reviewing trucking bids
- Tracking packages in transit
- Building loads to maximize truck space
- Collecting invoicing documents for timely billing
These workflows typically require endless phone calls, emails, and texts across fragmented systems. Augie streamlines them by operating across multiple channels such as email, Slack, SMS, voice, and Telegram.
Though Augment has not disclosed revenue, Abbott says the startup has already more than doubled its customer base since its seed raise. Clients like Armstrong Transport Group report a 40% reduction in invoice delays after adopting Augie.
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Investor Jacob Effron of Redpoint said customer feedback was a major driver behind his firm’s investment: “People really love the product. I think they use it in quite a ubiquitous way.”
With the new funding, Augment plans to hire 50 engineers and expand its feature set to address the fragmented and outdated systems used across the logistics sector. While the company is currently focused on trucking, its long-term vision includes international shipping and broader logistics operations.
Competition is heating up, with startups like Vooma and FleetWorks pursuing similar AI assistants and shipping giants like FedEx and UPS developing in-house AI. But Abbott remains confident:
“Augie does really cool stuff. Augie is really thinking ahead and reasoning like a human and acting on it, so it saves everybody a lot of time.”
