What We Heard at Manifest 2026

By Neesha Godbole and Austin Meacham The Sentinel Global team attended Manifest 2026 in Las Vegas, the premier supply chain and logistics technology conference. The event was well-organized and genuinely tech-enabled — attendee badges had a button you could press to instantly connect with anyone within six feet. That small detail captured the broader energy of the week: this industry isn't just talking about technology, it's using it.

We spent the week in back-to-back meetings with folks across the supply chain ecosystem - founders, buyers, operators, and fellow investors. Here’s what we took away.

Buyers Are Ready — and Disciplined

In our Legacy Limitations piece last year, we noted that AI was met with skepticism on the conference circuit. What a difference a year makes. At Manifest 2026, that skepticism has transformed into urgency. Supply chain and procurement leaders are past the point of debating about whether to adopt AI; rather, they’re figuring out which use cases to start with and how quickly it can accelerate their business objectives. We heard it over and over: if you’re not actively piloting AI in your operations, you’re already behind.

That said, nobody is writing blank checks. Buyers told us their investments need to hit a real pain point, show clear ROI within a single budget cycle, and justify the organizational cost of change. One executive at a panel shared they want “asymmetric, exponential advantage.” Because change management for new technology requires so much time and energy, incremental improvements aren’t enough to warrant an investment.  

There was plenty of proof that the ROI is out there. One panelist described a top-five company in China that took an AI-first approach to network optimization and found $200 million in additional value from one project. Another company automated order processing that would previously burn hours of manual work every day. People were not just talking about what AI could do, they were discussing real production deployments.

At the macro level, the industry continues to grow. Global merchandise trade has nearly quintupled over the past 30 years — from roughly $5 trillion in the mid-1990s to over $24 trillion today — and the supply chain software market built on top of it is compounding at over 10% annually. Major funds are investing behind industrial resilience and reshoring, and technical founders from companies like Google and Tesla are choosing to build in this space. Manifest itself has grown from 2,000 to 7,000 attendees in three years. The talent and capital entering this category is serious.

Four Themes That Defined the Floor

There were four broad topics that infused every company and conversation at the conference. 

1. Agentic AI and the Shift to “Systems of Action” AI agents for logistics, freight, and procurement workflows were the dominant presence on the expo floor. The most common pattern was agents layered on top of existing ERPs or systems of record – often connecting into multiple systems – and automating various parts of a workflow. The common phrase was that the industry is moving from “system of record” (the old paradigm) to “system of action,” with agents that autonomously execute on tasks that would have previously required a human clicking, typing, or navigating between tools. 

Happy Robot was one of the companies that stood out to us. The company has created what they call an “AI-native operating system for the real economy” — a platform for building and deploying AI workers that handle end-to-end operational tasks across the supply chain, from negotiations to scheduling to document processing. CEO Pablo Palafox shared a story on stage about one customer's team dressing up as robots for Halloween, which says something about how embedded the product has become. We also came away impressed by Augment for freight workflow automation and Nauta as an interoperability enabler for logistics. 

One panelist offered a useful framework for evaluating these companies: ignore revenue metrics early on; focus instead on API calls, weekly active users, and session length. Has the product become a daily workflow dependency? That’s the signal worth paying attention to.

2. Warehouse Automation and the Hardware Advantage

Warehouse automation was everywhere, from startups to major incumbents. Computer vision for inventory and pallet tracking had some of the most compelling demos on the floor, with Gather AI being a notable example. 

Cold chain had its own section of the expo, and for good reason: it’s one of the most technically challenging segments in logistics. Operations at freezing temperatures require specialized design, different technology, and strict worker requirements, resulting in a level of complexity that ambient warehousing simply doesn’t have.

CEO of Gather AI, Sankalp Arora, on stage in the Cold Chain Pavilion the expo floor.

We also noticed a broader trend that's reflected in the venture market at large: hardware is becoming a significant differentiator and market entry strategy. Physical AI — vision systems, robotics, sensors — gives companies a way to capture proprietary data that software-only competitors can't easily replicate. A panelist drew the distinction between "software-differentiated robotics" and commodity hardware, noting that Western solutions need a software edge to compete with alternatives that can be 30% cheaper overseas. 

Our portfolio company Cyvl is a strong example in this space, using vehicle-mounted sensors and AI to autonomously assess road infrastructure for states and municipalities, building a digital twin of all assets including sidewalks, street signs, and potholes. We're now seeing this pattern enter freight. GenLogs impressed us at the conference - a company that has built a nationwide network of roadside sensors providing real-time intelligence on every motor carrier in America.

3. Procurement Tech Is Having Its Moment

Procurement was one of the hottest categories at the conference. People are bullish, and we are too.

Our portfolio company Pavus is building in this space, deploying AI agents that build, enrich, and structure spend cubes, then drive margin gains through smarter sourcing. The conversations we had at Manifest reinforced our conviction in what CEO Khalil Bouraine and the team are doing. Across the board, procurement leaders told us they’re drowning in unstructured spend data and manual processes. They want intelligent systems that can take messy procurement data and turn it into actionable sourcing decisions without months of consulting work upfront.

The broader theme was orchestration. Buyers don’t want another point solution, they want workflows that can connect sourcing, contracting, and supplier management in a way that matches how quickly the business actually moves. One enterprise CPO told us: “I want to type in what I need to buy, and it just happens,” a concept that Pavus is building the foundation to enable. When buyers are articulating a vision that sounds AI-native, it’s a clear indicator that the market has moved past awareness and into expectation. 

4. Autonomous Trucking and Freight 

Two full-size semi trucks sat on the expo floor, and autonomous driving was a major topic — particularly in long-haul trucking, yard management, and first-mile freight.  Panelists made the case that autonomous vehicles could accelerate regulatory acceptance by improving road safety. The broader evidence for this claim is building, with early data showing autonomous vehicles significantly outperforming human drivers on safety metrics. 

We also heard a lot of debate about freight brokerages. Some attendees argued they’re going away as regulations thin the market and carriers gain leverage. Others disagreed, claiming the complexity of freight networks and the relationships that hold them together aren’t going to be automated away overnight. 

Two Things Worth Saying Out Loud

Enterprise Buyers Will Partner When It Makes Sense

There's a persistent fear in the market right now, amplified by AI, that enterprises will just build everything in-house. The conversations we had at Manifest suggest otherwise. Buyers described their decision making as, if they have the tech resources to deliver it soon, they build. If not, they partner. Most internal resources are being directed at core products, which leaves whitespace for startups solving deprioritized problems with solutions ahead of what a buyer could build internally.

In Supply Chain, a Pilot Is Not a Customer

This came up in multiple conversations and it’s worth stating plainly: many startups in this space claim logos that are actually just pilots. Large buyers try a lot of different vendors. Whether those pilots convert comes down to how core the problem is and whether the tool delivers measurable outcomes for the business.  Looking Ahead

Every theme we heard at Manifest — agentic AI in procurement, physical intelligence in freight, warehouse automation in cold chain — points to the idea that supply chain is a technology category worth spending time on, something we’ve known for years. 

Our team has been investing at the intersection of commerce and technology for over two decades, with partners Jeremy Kranz, Ethel Chen, and Karan Sharma backing companies like DoorDash, leading 20 IPOs, and building deep global relationships through their time at GIC. For founders building in this space, that means a team that understands the domain, can help close enterprise buyers, and can open doors internationally when it's time to scale.

Coming out of Manifest, we're actively looking for companies from seed to Series C in a few areas: AI that eliminates labor costs across freight modes — truck, air, ocean, rail — companies intercepting physical data to build new systems of record, and robotics in warehousing.

If you're building in this space, we'd love to talk. austin@sentinelglobal.xyz