Global logistics spending tops ten trillion dollars a year, yet most of the software managing that spend was built for a simpler, more predictable world. A new category of technology — agentic AI — is changing that, not by layering another dashboard on top of existing systems, but by acting on decisions in real time. This episode of Automatic explores
the full logistics and supply chain market research report to explain why 2025 marks a genuine inflection point, and what it means for operators, investors, and the people doing the work.
The episode traces the evolution from passive systems of record and predictive analytics to a third era defined by autonomous action — and unpacks the specific forces that made this shift possible right now. Here's what's covered:
The core argument of the episode is that the constraint is no longer the technology itself — it's the readiness of the organizations deploying it. Companies that built clean data infrastructure early are pulling ahead; those that didn't are finding that even capable AI produces poor results on fragmented inputs. The episode closes by reframing the human-in-the-loop versus human-on-the-loop distinction as one of the most consequential design choices logistics operators will make in the next few years. For more from the show, listen to
The CIO's Playbook for Building an AI Center of Excellence, which examines how enterprise leaders are structuring AI governance and capability-building from the top down.