Flexport volumes jump 40% on just 5% more staff as AI reshapes forwarding

Flexport's freight volumes are up 40% from a year ago while its headcount has grown just 5%, founder and CEO Ryan Petersen told FreightWaves — a gap he attributes directly to artificial intelligence tools now running across customs, routing and the company's own engineering teams.

"Our volumes are up 40% annually. And headcount's only up 5%, so you can see the AI's working," Petersen said.

The numbers translate into a striking productivity story: for every additional hire, Flexport moved roughly eight times more cargo. The interview followed Flexport's fall technology release, which added an AI classification tool to its customs software and extended rail, barge and air routing to its free Flexport Atlas map. Time magazine named Flexport's Customs Technology Suite to its Best Inventions of 2026 list on Oct. 15.

Where does AI hit a legal wall?

In customs — the most regulated corner of Flexport's business — the AI still cannot act alone. Classifying goods under the Harmonized Tariff Schedule is "the hardest problem in customs," Petersen said. Flexport's new tool suggests a 10-digit code and links the CBP rulings behind it, but federal law sets the boundary.

In a Jan. 16 ruling, CBP found that a foreign online platform was conducting customs business when its AI derived tariff subheadings beyond the six-digit level for goods to be entered. Under 19 U.S.C. 1641, only a licensed customs broker may conduct customs business for another party. Every AI-suggested code Flexport customers want to use goes to a licensed broker on its team, who reviews it by hand before filing. "It's kind of like how AI meets the real world," Petersen said.

Hallucination is a real constraint. Petersen said CBP leaves older binding rulings posted even after newer ones supersede them. "They don't delete the old one. They're both there," he said — an AI model can cite the outdated ruling where an experienced broker would know to ignore it.

How bad are rivals' customs filings?

In February, Flexport launched a free tool letting any company audit its customs broker's past entries — something Petersen called "probably the meanest thing we've ever built." Audits of entries filed by competing brokers found an average error rate of 20%, which he blamed on 2025's tariff churn.

Flexport's own error rate on U.S. customs filings last year was 0.2% — roughly 100 times better, though that comparison rests on Flexport's own audits, and its February release said the estimate was "based on what we know of other customs brokers." At some point, Petersen said, an importer not using Flexport's tariff technology is close to negligent.

The same discipline applies to customer delivery rules — what Petersen called "a spaghetti web of business logic," such as 10 days' notice for one warehouse and three for another. AI alone can't be trusted there: "If it misses, the misses are worth too much." Instead, Flexport has AI write code for the rules, which an expert signs off before it runs identically every time.

What is driving the ocean demand surge?

Flexport's ocean peak started early. "Basically since April, we've been just ripping," Petersen said. Customers are still booking cargo that won't arrive before Christmas, so he now counts the surge as growth, not early peak season.

His theory is tariff refunds. The Supreme Court struck down tariffs imposed under IEEPA in February, and as of Oct. 2, CBP had sent about $126 billion in refunds to the Treasury for disbursement, Supply Chain Dive reported, citing a court filing. Petersen called it a "massive stimulus for the industry." Customers plan to spend the money on inventory, though he cautions them: "Most lottery winners go bankrupt. Don't go crazy buying inventory."

Freightos' Oct. 20 update put Asia-U.S. West Coast rates at $8,126 per 40-foot container and East Coast at $9,700 — "stable but still highly elevated," though well below 2021 highs. With only 10 or 11 ocean carriers left, capacity discipline through slow steaming and blanked sailings persists.

Is data center cargo squeezing air freight?

Petersen estimated data center cargo — chips, server racks, construction materials — at around 8% of global air capacity, projected to triple next year. An expert at Flexport's conference put full freighters flying Taiwan-to-U.S. just for data centers at 30 a day. A single freighter of GPUs and racks can carry $500 million in cargo; that will move by air "probably forever," he said. Middle Eastern carriers returning planes to service have blunted the rate impact.

Internally, Flexport is weighing engineering teams of two or three, down from eight. Petersen estimates the tools make an engineer seven times more efficient, and the company may move from two tech releases a year to three or four in 2027. "The frontier companies are not going to become a logistics provider," he said. "We just have to be super aggressive in using them to make our business amazing."