Above the Fold: Supply Chain Logistics News (February 13, 2026)

By Adrian Gonzalez

Based on my LinkedIn feed, many folks were at the Manifest conference in Las Vegas this week. I wasn’t there — too busy with client engagements, plus my fractured ankle would have kept me away anyway.

If you were there, what did you learn — other than AI, AI, and more AI? Post a comment and let me know.

Speaking of AI, did you hear about the karaoke machine company that caused the stocks of major trucking and freight brokerage firms to crash yesterday?

As Ryan Dezember and Paul Berger report in the Wall Street Journal today:

The Florida firm, formerly the Singing Machine Co. and now known as Algorhythm Holdings, published a news release shortly before stock trading opened touting AI technology capable of increasing trucking efficiencies. Algorhythm, which has a stock market value of less than $3 million, hasn’t landed any software clients in the U.S. yet. But its announcement nonetheless rattled the market.

By midday, logistics firms were down more than 20% in some cases. They recovered somewhat as traders and analysts zeroed in on the source of the panic. Yet billions of dollars in market value were wiped out by the closing bell.

If you read Algorhythm’s press release, the productivity numbers they claim aren’t even that impressive. Yet, to paraphrase The Smiths, there was “panic on the streets of Wall Street, panic on the streets of the internet” — and the stocks of C.H. Robinson, Landstar System, Ryder, J.B.Hunt and other logistics companies were pummeled.

I better be careful with my April Fools’ Days posts moving forward, especially if I write about anything related to AI. There are too many people shouting “Revolution!” in the streets these days — and they have no idea what they’re talking about.

And with that, let’s go to the supply chain and logistics news that caught my attention this week, which features (you guessed it) several AI-related items.

No Panic Here: AI in Logistics from Descartes, Oracle, and Chain.io

A short conversation between a father and son, sometime in the future:

Son: Dad, how did companies manage their supply chains before AI?
Father: I have no idea. Go ask your AI teacher.

At the rate AI is progressing, any company not using it today to make its [insert supply chain function here] smarter and faster seems destined for extinction — at least that’s the vibe being created in the market right now.

As always, technology is advancing faster than most companies are ready or willing to adopt. Still, it’s important to keep a pulse on innovation, because sooner or later, you’ll need to decide where you stand on the adoption curve.

At the Manifest conference, for example, Descartes Systems Group (a Talking Logistics sponsor) showcased its latest AI innovations and enhancements across Global Trade Intelligence (GTI), Forwarder/Broker Enterprise Systems, Transportation Management & Real-Time Visibility, and Fleet and Last Mile. Here are some of the AI enhancements related to GTI:

AI-driven denied party screening that, in collaboration with human oversight, reduces false positives to just fractions of a percent creating significant efficiencies, especially for organizations with large screening volumes.
AI-enabled classification to accelerate product lookups and enhance the accuracy and consistency of import/export classification decisions.
Agentic AI to help quickly identify trade patterns, trends and anomalies across large datasets using natural language queries, making complex global trade data more accessible and actionable.

For more insights on AI-driven Global Trade Intelligence, check out the Talking Logistics episode I recorded last July with Ken Wood, Executive Vice President, Product Management at Descartes — or read highlights from our conversation at “AI Innovations In Global Trade Intelligence Technology.”

In other AI news, Oracle announced “new AI agents within Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications to help supply chain leaders accelerate decision-making and drive greater efficiency across planning, procurement, manufacturing, maintenance, and logistics.”

Among the logistics and order management agents highlighted:

Wave Research Advisor Agent: Helps logistics teams resolve warehouse issues faster and improve warehouse picking and shipping performance. This agent analyzes and summarizes batches of warehouse work, identifies issues and root causes, and provides actionable recommendations.

Task Management Assistant: Helps logistics teams identify and prioritize at-risk orders to improve shipment reliability and fulfillment. This agent detects missing planned ship dates, surfaces key order details for supervisor review, and reprioritizes tasks to address potential delays.

Purchase Order to Sales Order Converter Agent: Helps order management teams accelerate order creation and reduce fulfillment costs. This agent extracts data from PDF purchase orders, automatically creates and submits sales orders, summarizes exceptions, and learns from user feedback to improve accuracy.

Also this week, Chain.io announced AI Checks, “a shipment monitoring tool that finds problems hiding in large spreadsheets and continues tracking them as data changes over days, weeks, and months.” Here’s an excerpt from the press release:

“Logistics teams are hunting for needles in haystacks every day,” said Brian Glick, CEO of Chain.io. “You get a 500-row spreadsheet, and three shipments have problems — but which three? Tomorrow, you get an updated file with 520 rows. What changed? What needs attention now? Teams waste hours scrolling and cross-referencing. We built AI Checks to surface those needles automatically and keep tracking them as shipments evolve.”

AI Checks creates a “shipment inbox” from uploaded spreadsheets. Users write verification rules in plain English — such as “Flag any shipment going to Brazil” or “Verify all HTS codes are valid” — and the system automatically applies them. When users upload an updated spreadsheet the next day or next week, AI Checks shows only what changed. Shipments that have been reviewed and archived remain hidden unless new issues surface.

Wait — isn’t AI supposed to get rid of spreadsheets?

It’s not happening.

As I wrote last week in “Excel Spreadsheets In The Age Of AI,” if Agentic AI can make spreadsheets smarter, faster, and less fragile — helping people make better decisions instead of just creating more complexity — then marrying the two might not be ridiculous at all.

Looking at these announcements by Descartes, Oracle, and Chain.io, it appears that the real value of AI right now lies in improving how decisions get made. Whether it’s screening trade compliance data, prioritizing warehouse tasks, or spotting anomalies in spreadsheets, the common thread is speed, clarity, and better judgment under pressure.

And with that, have a meaningful weekend!

Song of the Week: “Panic” by The Smiths