freight-automation
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Mars Auto
Mars Auto is a South Korean AI company building self-driving Class 8 trucks for long-haul freight. Founded in 2017 by KAIST computer scientists Ilsu Park and Gyuri Im, it uses a vision-only, end-to-end AI driving agent - seven cameras and a single neural network, with no LiDAR and no HD maps - that can be retrofitted onto existing trucks. Mars Auto ran the first commercial long-haul autonomous freight in Korea in 2023 and began paid U.S. operations from a Texas base in 2024, aiming to deploy fully unmanned trucks by 2028.
PortPro
PortPro is a New Jersey-based software company that builds a drayage-specific operating platform - a transportation management system (TMS) purpose-built for the container trucking companies and freight brokers that move ocean containers between ports, rail yards and warehouses. Its drayOS platform handles order entry, dispatch, container tracking, appointment setting, billing and driver payments in one system, and in 2025 it layered on 'Jerry' and 'Helen,' agentic-AI teammates that dispatch loads, validate documents and generate invoices automatically. Founded by Michael Mecca, who grew up in the drayage business, PortPro raised a $12M Series A led by Avenue Growth Partners in 2023 and serves hundreds of drayage carriers and brokers across North America.
Ilsu Park
Ilsu Park is the co-founder and CEO of Mars Auto, a Seoul-based startup building camera-based, map-free self-driving software for heavy trucks. A KAIST computer science graduate and self-taught deep-learning engineer, he started with a hobby project that used a driving-game simulator to train a neural network, then turned that idea into a company that runs paid autonomous freight in Korea and the United States. Mars Auto takes a Tesla-style vision-first approach, skipping LiDAR and HD maps to cut the cost of automating a Class 8 truck to roughly $7,000 per unit. Park has raised about $12 million, graduated from Y Combinator, and made the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list. He is targeting fully driverless long-haul freight by 2028.
Shipwell
Shipwell is an Austin-based software company building an AI-integrated transportation management system (TMS) that unifies shipment planning, real-time visibility, automation, and settlement in one cloud platform. Founded in 2016 by Greg Price and Jason Traff, it helps shippers and logistics teams across food & beverage, manufacturing, and distribution move freight with less manual work. After selling its brokerage arm to CloudTrucks in 2024, Shipwell now operates as a pure-play SaaS provider and has been named a Visionary in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for TMS for five consecutive years.
Loop
Loop is a San Francisco logistics AI company that turns messy freight paperwork - PDFs, EDI feeds, carrier invoices - into structured data that finance and supply chain teams can actually use. Built around DUX, its in-house family of logistics-trained models, Loop automates freight audit, payment, and parcel visibility for enterprises including Michael Kors, Under Armour, and General Mills. The company raised a $95M Series C in April 2026 to expand from freight payments into a broader supply chain intelligence platform.