# Why project44 Split Itself in Two to Sell Logistics Firms AI Agents

Page: https://hirantha.me/blog/why-project44-split-itself-in-two-to-sell-logistics-firms-ai-agents
Published: 2026-07-30
Written by: hirantha.me Newsroom (AI-generated). An AI model wrote this from the sources listed below; how it is made: https://hirantha.me/about/newsroom
Topics: logistics, supply-chain, ai-agents, enterprise-software, project44

> project44 spun out LSP44, a separate AI-agent business for freight brokers and 3PLs, betting shippers and carriers need different products entirely.

## A logistics-tech vendor decided one product couldn't serve two customers

On 14 July 2026, supply-chain software vendor project44 announced it was splitting into two independent companies. The original project44 keeps serving large shippers - the retailers and manufacturers who need visibility into where their freight is. A new company, LSP44, takes over selling to the other side of the transaction: third-party logistics providers (3PLs), freight forwarders, and brokers, collectively known in the industry as logistics service providers (LSPs).

Founder and chief executive Jett McCandless, who now runs both entities, gave a blunt reason for the split: "Shippers and LSPs don't buy the same thing, so we stopped pretending one business could serve both." According to reporting by trade outlet FreightWaves, the two customer types optimize for different things entirely - shippers care about on-time-in-full delivery rates, working capital, and inventory reduction, while LSPs care about dispatching more freight with fewer staff and winning business on price. Trying to build one product roadmap that satisfies both had become a drag on both sides.

## What LSP44 actually sells

LSP44 isn't a new product built from scratch. It's project44's existing carrier network and logistics data - built up over the company's eleven years - repackaged as something an LSP can embed directly into its own systems under its own brand, rather than a dashboard shippers log into. project44 has put roughly one billion US dollars into that underlying infrastructure since founding the company in 2014, when its first product was a real-time interface covering rate quotes, dispatch, visibility, and paperwork for the less-than-truckload freight market.

The pitch is what the company calls an "agent factory": artificial intelligence (AI) agents that come pre-loaded with operational context from project44's network, rather than generic AI bolted onto existing software. That network, per the company, spans over 280,000 carriers, 1.5 billion shipments handled annually, and 706 million carrier data events processed daily. McCandless summed up the reasoning to FreightWaves: "AI agents without context are just guessing faster."

Three functions are named specifically: automated carrier procurement, which the company says cuts costs by 18%; exception handling (resolving shipment problems like delays or misroutes), claimed to resolve autonomously more than 80% of the time; and shipment-status handling, said to cut inbound status-check calls by more than 60%. The company describes deployment as "clicks, not code" - no prompt engineering required to stand up an agent.

## The adoption claim, and who's named

project44 says nine of the world's ten largest logistics providers already run on the infrastructure that's becoming LSP44 - a claim the company repeated in its own announcement and that FreightWaves' independent coverage also reported without disputing. Early customers named in project44's release include CEVA Logistics, BlueGrace Logistics, Worldwide Express, and DSV; FreightWaves' independent reporting named Worldwide Express, BlueGrace, and DSV specifically as early adopters of the AI agents.

## The financial angle: profitable on day one

The detail that separates this from a typical AI-product launch is that LSP44 starts out profitable, according to project44. The company is framing that directly against venture-backed logistics AI startups, which by its account have collectively raised billions of dollars in funding while remaining unprofitable. FreightWaves' reporting adds a harder data point behind that discipline: project44's overall headcount has been cut from 1,200 to 582 employees, with McCandless said to have set a hard cap of 600. That's a real cost, but it also means LSP44 isn't launching with the burn rate that typically comes with a venture-funded AI product push.

Structurally, project44 and LSP44 will run as separate businesses - their own sales teams, engineering teams, and leadership - while continuing to share the underlying carrier network and data infrastructure the split is built on, according to both the company's announcement and independent coverage from trade outlet DC Velocity.

## What it means in practice

For a logistics service provider evaluating this, the pitch is narrower and arguably more useful than a generic "AI for logistics" tool: it's specifically infrastructure meant to sit inside an LSP's own stack rather than a shipper-facing dashboard, with named metrics (18% procurement savings, 80%+ autonomous exception resolution) that are checkable against a pilot rather than taken on faith. For anyone tracking enterprise software more broadly, it's a data point in a trend worth watching: vendors that built a single platform for two different buyer types during the pandemic-era growth phase are now finding that AI agents, which need to act inside a specific workflow rather than just display information, make that one-size-fits-all approach harder to sustain. Splitting the company is one way to resolve that; expect other logistics and supply-chain software vendors serving both sides of a transaction to face the same choice.

## Sources

- [project44 Creates Two Businesses and Launches LSP44](https://www.project44.com/press-releases/project44-creates-two-businesses-and-launches-lsp44-the-ai-agent-and-api-infrastructure-that-9-of-the-worlds-10-largest-logistics-providers-already-run/), project44 Press Releases
- [Project44 forms two new businesses, launches AI-native LSP44](https://www.freightwaves.com/news/project44-forms-two-new-businesses-launches-ai-native-lsp44), FreightWaves
- [Project44 splits its shipment visibility tech into two businesses](https://www.dcvelocity.com/technology/transportation-it/shipping-software/project44-splits-shipment-visibility-tech-into-two-businesses), DC Velocity