Maritime technology company Sedna has acquired artificial intelligence startup Bridge Labs to accelerate its development of automated workflows for shipping and commodities transactions.
Bridge Labs was founded less than two years ago and merged earlier this year with AI developer The Shipping Bot. The startup has deployed five commercial AI systems for industry operators including Louis Dreyfus, Glencore, IFCHOR Galbraiths, MOL Chemical Tankers, Bunge, Oldendorff, and Fednav.
“Shipping teams won’t change how they work for a product that isn’t exceptional,” said Bill Dobie, CEO of Sedna.
“What Bridge Labs demonstrated is that AI, applied intelligently to how software is engineered, raises the bar on what a focused team can deliver. That is the model we are building around.”
Following the acquisition, Bridge Labs founder Alex Crooks has been appointed as Sedna’s Chief Product Officer.
“Our customers know exactly what great looks like. We are here to build it,” he said.
Sedna has also appointed Lucie Phillips, former commercial executive at Zencargo and Deliveroo, as Chief Operating Officer.
“The combination of the customer base, the data, and the way we’re building with AI makes this one of the most compelling opportunities in enterprise software,” Ms Phillips said.
Additionally, Jacob Koch Blicher, who previously led the implementation of the Sedna platform at shipping company Norden, has been promoted to Vice President of Customer Success.
Sedna has steadily expanded its reach over the last few years, moving away from being a maritime-focused email platform to create an interconnected data platform with a range of different modules, such as Sedna Trade, including Sedna Pre-fixture and the Sedna Voyage Management System (VMS); and Sedna Build, its AI and software developer toolkits.
The company says that its next phase will be to move from a system that captures context to one that actively reasons from it, surfacing what matters before teams go looking, keeping chartering, operations and finance working from the same real-time picture, and acting as an intelligent operator on behalf of the professionals running shipping.
