Nexcade

High-Level Overview

Nexcade is a London-based technology company developing agentic AI automation for freight forwarders and logistics teams, focusing on pricing, quoting, procurement, and booking workflows across air, ocean, and road freight.[1][2][3] It serves global freight forwarders like Zencargo, Cardinal Global Logistics, and XPO, solving the industry's reliance on manual emails, fragmented data, and exception-heavy processes that cause slow responses, missed quotes (up to 30% unanswered), and margin erosion amid compressing freight rates.[2][3][4] By extracting unstructured data from communications, automating vendor outreach, and handling edge cases like out-of-gauge cargo or hazardous materials, Nexcade cuts quote turnaround by over 90%, boosts win rates, and enables teams to scale without added headcount—demonstrating strong early momentum with 40% monthly growth in workflow volumes and plans to 10x customers in the next year.[1][3][4]

Origin Story

Nexcade was founded in 2025 by Dan Bailey and Tasho Kjosev, emerging from stealth in October 2025 with £1.9M ($2.5M) in pre-seed funding led by Connect Ventures, alongside MMC Ventures, Entropy Industrial Capital, Inovia, and angels like Charlie Songhurst and Keith Wallington.[2][3][4] Bailey brings deep logistics domain expertise from working with freight teams at firms like Xeneta, while Kjosev offers world-class AI and technical leadership from Raft, Gravity Sketch, Improbable, and UnlikelyAI—forming a complementary duo obsessed with real-world workflows.[2][4] The idea stemmed from freight forwarding's persistent manual bottlenecks despite digitization: unstructured emails and tribal knowledge that automation tools fail to address, leading the founders to build AI agents that unify messy inputs and drive revenue-focused automation; early traction came via stealth partnerships with flagship customers, proving rapid value before public launch.[2][3][4]

Core Differentiators

• Agentic AI for messy realities: Unlike rigid automation that breaks on exceptions, Nexcade's multi-agent orchestration handles unstructured emails, attachments, non-standard cargo, hazardous materials, and last-minute changes—unifying fragmented data from shippers, carriers, and brokers into structured workflows.[1][2][3][4]
• End-to-end freight automation: Covers quoting (faster time-to-quote, intelligent pricing via win rates and benchmarks, automated vendor rates), booking (auto-enters orders, completes handovers), and procurement—maximizing margins and responding first to tenders.[1][2]
• Rapid deployment and adoption: Forward-deployed engineers customize to workflows for day-one results; trusted by leaders with 40% MoM growth and 90%+ turnaround reduction.[1][3][4]
• Data-to-revenue leverage: Surfaces hidden insights like price benchmarks in workflows, shifting teams from firefighting to proactive margin optimization in a thin-margin industry.[1][2][4]

Role in the Broader Tech Landscape

Nexcade rides the agentic AI wave in logistics, where maturing natural language models now reliably tackle non-linear, exception-filled workflows that traditional TMS (transport management systems) and RPA ignore—perfectly timed as freight rates compress post-volatility, halving revenues for some forwarders and squeezing 5% net margins.[2][3][4] Market forces favor it: global trade's "connective tissue" remains email-dependent amid digitization, with 30% unanswered quotes and unused capacity from poor visibility; economic pressures demand efficiency gains, while AI's tipping point enables unstructured data mastery.[2][3] By automating revenue-critical quoting/bookings, Nexcade influences the ecosystem as a "commercial lever," helping forwarders win more business, scale ops, and compete—potentially reshaping how the $1T+ freight industry handles the "messy middle" of global supply chains.[2][4]

Quick Take & Future Outlook

Nexcade's stealth-to-adoption speed signals a breakout: expect expansion beyond quoting/booking into full procurement and multi-modal ops, targeting 10x customer growth amid rising AI-logistics demand.[3] Trends like AI agents proliferating in vertical SaaS, persistent freight volatility, and trade uncertainties (e.g., weak 2026 US volumes) will amplify its edge, evolving it from niche automator to essential infrastructure for forwarders chasing margins.[3][6] As the first responder in a time-is-deal-killer market, Nexcade positions logistics teams to not just survive efficiency crunches but dominate with AI-powered speed and smarts—elevating pricing, quoting, and procurement from bottlenecks to battlegrounds for global trade wins.[1][2]