As Freightos Plummets, Wall Street Asks – Can Global Logistics Survive the Tech Transition?

It was more of a deadened thud than a dramatic selloff, the kind that occurs when a stock breaks through a level that traders have been acting as though it matters. One of the more well-known brands in “digital freight,” Freightos, fell precipitously after revealing that Zvi Schreiber, the company’s founder, would be leaving the board. None of this might alter the fate of a real container rolling through Long Beach or Rotterdam. However, containers are not traded on markets. They exchange tales about dominance.

Freightos’s story has always been straightforward and up to date: take international freight forwarding, a messy, relationship-heavy business, and make it appear more like a travel agency.

The phrase “vendor-neutral,” which sounds comforting until you realize that neutrality is only a business model when everyone trusts the referee, is a recurring theme in the company’s own language. Freightos highlighted revenue growth in 2025 in its most recent results release, and it repeatedly reiterated a goal that Wall Street has grown accustomed to hearing: breakeven, soon—more precisely, adjusted EBITDA breakeven by Q4 2026.

That being said, the timing of the board change was a complete mess. For some time now, investors have been wary of logistics technology, and not just because freight has been unpredictable and cyclical. The optimism of software-first models was squeezed in early 2024 when the Wall Street Journal reported on logistics-tech startups reducing expenses and staffing as a freight slump continued. At that time, you could sense the change: there was more discussion of runway and survival and less about “disruption.”

Now add the 2026 component that seems to be frightening everyone at once: artificial intelligence (AI) that can complete the mundane tasks of freight brokering more quickly than a weary human staring at four screens, including matching loads, negotiating rates, and managing paperwork. With freight-brokerage names declining after a small company’s claims about AI-driven efficiency gains helped spark a wider fear trade, Reuters recently documented how anxiety is leaking into public markets. Whether or not the claims are entirely accurate is not the crucial detail. Investors are behaving as though they might be real.

From a distance, it’s simple to make fun of that panic. There are many exceptions in logistics, including weather, port strikes, delays, customs idiosyncrasies, missing documentation, and drivers who abruptly stop returning calls. The industry still relies on personal connections, favors, and the unofficial knowledge of who actually answers after 6 p.m. for a reason. It seems as though those who believe that software will make everything easier have never had to move urgent cargo through a crowded hub on a bad day.

However, the opposing viewpoint is persistent. More and more logistics are being digitalized each year without a formal ribbon-cutting ceremony. A shipper desires to be seen. A carrier desires quicker payment. Less manual labor is what a forwarder desires. To remove margin from a middle layer, algorithms only need to reduce workflow times thousands of times per day, gradually altering customer expectations. They don’t even need to be “fully autonomous.”

Even though it isn’t the entire story, Freightos becomes a helpful symbol at that point. If growth slows down, guidance appears cautious, or leadership changes cast doubt on the platform, it can still increase bookings while disappointing markets.

While the underlying freight market acts like the weather, investors seem to think that logistics technology should behave like SaaS—predictable, sticky, and compounding. Freightos can discuss building toward breakeven, but if the market detects slack in execution or momentum, they will still be penalized.

The real world continues to encroach outside the earnings-call bubble. Trucks are not moving. Under fluorescent lighting, warehouses hum. Due to a smudged label, pallets are rewrapped. It’s difficult to ignore how “tech transition” sounds neat when you watch that grind, but it really means replacing duct-taped processes while freight still needs to move every hour of the day. Furthermore, it’s still unclear if pure-play platforms, established firms with extensive data and scale, or a hybrid that combines the best features of both will emerge victorious.

The most dangerous position to be in, according to at least one prominent industry executive who spoke to Reuters, may be in the middle: not large enough to have proprietary data advantages, not unique enough to warrant human-heavy service, and not inexpensive enough to compete with automated networks. T

his is especially true if AI does speed up brokerage consolidation. In that scenario, a Freightos slump encompasses more than just Freightos. As the market demands immediate evidence that reinvention pays, it’s a stress signal from an industry attempting to reinvent itself.

Perhaps Wall Street isn’t asking the more profound question, “Will global logistics survive?” It will, of course, since consumers will continue to purchase goods. As logistics rewires itself, the more pertinent question is who will benefit: the platforms, brokers, carriers, or the AI layer that sits silently on top of them all and charges a nominal fee each time it makes a decision faster than a human can blink.