Byte-Sized AI is a bi-weekly column that covers all things artificial intelligence—from startup funding, to newly inked partnerships, to just-launched, AI-powered capabilities from major retailers, software providers and supply chain players.
Supply chain management technology company Exiger announced this week that it has secured a multi-million-dollar contract with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to help stop the flow of illicit transshipments.
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Transshipping typically sees importers sending items from a country that is not the shipment’s actual country of origin to avoid higher duties or specific scrutiny. President Donald Trump has started to make it clear that his administration plans to crack down on this practice.
Exiger said its proprietary AI models will help CBP to enforce tariff orders; upgrade its data for decision making and tracking transshipment; validate classification and country of origin; map out raw material flow through supply chains for specific organizations; assign risk scores to shipments and more. The idea is that the company’s technology will enable CBP agents to use extra data and systems as a resource when scanning shipments inbound into the U.S., where billions of pounds of goods enter through ports annually.
Brandon Daniels, Exiger’s CEO, said the company’s capabilities naturally aligned with CBP’s at-large goals.
“Billions of dollars worth of global trade move through illegal transshipment channels that seek to bypass U.S. restrictions,” Daniels said in a statement. “A core CBP mission is to enforce U.S. trade and forced labor laws, thereby helping ensure that American manufacturers and workers are competing on a level playing field. Exiger is proud to support this mission, bringing to bear the world’s largest proprietary supply chain database and the market’s most sophisticated AI.”
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told investors on the company’s Q3 earnings call this week that Amazon will work on ways to partner with third-party technology companies for agentic commerce.
Agentic commerce typically occurs when a consumer sends an AI model out to shop on their behalf. While that’s not been occurring in a robust way yet, technology giants like OpenAI have started to go all-in on building it out, and consumers’ adoption of AI in shopping continues to rise.
Today, consumers can direct large-language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT or Perplexity to find specific products on their behalf. OpenAI has now started offering ChatGPT users a way to purchase the surfaced options directly on the platform, if they come from specific merchants. Already, Etsy and Walmart, as well as Shopify merchants like Spanx, Glossier and Vuori have signed up to be part of Instant Checkout, though rollout is still pending in some of those cases.
Amazon has not announced partnerships with any major LLM providers to do the same. Simultaneously, the company has put blockers into its code to prevent some AI models from crawling its offerings as it builds its own, in-house shopping systems. Those have included its Buy For Me function, which allows Amazon users to have agentic AI purchase an item on their behalf from a different retailer; its shopping assistant Rufus and other features.
Until Thursday, it seemed Amazon was inclined to go it alone on agentic commerce development. But when an analyst asked Jassy about the company’s plans for that type of technology, the CEO said the e-tail giant is in talks with third-party providers as it considers its strategy.
“We’re also having conversations with, and expect over time to partner with, third-party agents. I think that it reminds me in some ways of the beginning of search engines many years ago being sources of discovery for commerce,” Jassy told investors. “You had to kind of figure out the right way to work together. Today, search engines are a very small part of our referral traffic, and third-party agents are a very small subset of that. I do think that we will find ways to partner. We have to find a way, though, that makes the customer experience good.”
Blue Yonder announced this week that it had added new AI capabilities to its Warehouse Management System (WMS).
One of the developments Blue Yonder is launching is a Warehouse Ops Agent, which shares “dynamic daily briefs” with users, helping them to track changes in real time and plan according to the data at hand. According to the company, the agent can make sense of strings of data rapidly, allowing practitioners to adapt their strategies based on the needs of the moment, rather than waiting to learn about changes or disruptions after the fact.
The company is also adding tools it calls Resource Orchestration and Resource Forecasting, which allow warehouse operators to understand which resources—based on information about the prioritized tasks at hand and conditions in the warehouse—the business needs to allocate and plan for.
The new systems also take automation into account and can marry the impact of human labor with that of machine labor. According to Blue Yonder, its new tools will help automatically identify issues with automation, allowing for the reassignment of resources as needed to complete necessary tasks. The system can also follow the productivity and efficiency metrics for robots and automation.
Blue Yonder is far from the only software company working to integrate agents into its customers’ workflows; the technology is beginning to influence multiple corners of the fashion, apparel and logistics industries and seems to be having a particular impact on supply chain processes.
Gurdip Singh, chief product officer at Blue Yonder, said the upgrades will unlock new capabilities for customers struggling against legacy technology that’s siloed.
“Warehouse operators face intense pressure in today’s digital world, yet many still struggle with disconnected systems and reactive processes, leading to operational challenges,” Singh said in a statement. “Our latest warehouse enhancements provide customers with a new level of efficiency and effectiveness. By building on decades of customer-focused development, our Warehouse Management Solution leverages the power of cloud-native computing and AI, enabling our customers to seamlessly scale resources and act faster with greater precision for better outcomes. This not only delivers substantial financial benefits but helps our customers outperform in today’s competitive market.”
