CargoAi posts record H1 2026 results as global forwarders accelerate their switch

CargoAi today announced record results for the first half of 2026, closing the period ahead of its own ambitious budget across all key indicators - while remaining fully profitable — and further cementing its position as the fastest-growing and most resilient digital platform in global airfreight. The defining signal of the half: an accelerating wave of large, global freight forwarders switching to CargoAi solutions — the clearest possible marker of the platform’s enterprise maturity.

Ahead of Plan Across Every Key Metric

Six months into 2026, CargoAi is tracking ahead of budget, powered by record platform activity and accelerating enterprise adoption. Highlights for H1 2026 include:

• Unique shipments (AWBs) going through the platform up 64% year-on-year
• Customer base expanded ahead of the record pace set in 2025, reaching 6,717 companies and 12,880 offices, with 31,900 users across 158 countries
• Bookable airline network expanded to 110+ carriers worldwide
• A 98% customer renewal rate and record Net Promoter Score, maintained even as the customer base scales
• Named “Solution Provider of the Year” by Air Cargo Week for the second consecutive year, reinforcing CargoAi’s leadership in airfreight digitalisation, alongside two further 2026 distinctions: “Best Air Cargo Technology Ecosystem” and “Air Cargo Digital Transformation Leader.”

Crucially, CargoAi remained fully profitable throughout the half. At a moment when several freight-tech players are cutting guidance, announcing layoffs, or undergoing forced recapitalizations, CargoAi’s profitability sends a different signal: this is a platform that will still be here. Funded, supported, and improving in five years. That assurance is reinforced by CargoAi’s place within the CargoTech ecosystem and its companies - a strong backbone for the platform and a further sign of confidence for customers building on it. And the growth itself is managed with the same discipline: onboarding, support, and infrastructure capacity are scaled ahead of demand, so every new customer receives the same level of service from day one.

The Switch Is On: Large Global Forwarders Move to CargoAi

The standout trend of H1 2026 is the conversion of large, global freight forwarders - organizations that historically relied on legacy rate management systems or first-generation digital platforms - now switching to CargoAi as their procurement and booking backbone.

• Record trial-to-paid conversion among mid-size and large forwarders, confirming that free and trial users are graduating to full enterprise plans at unprecedented rates
• Enterprise-grade onboarding at scale: single sign-on (SSO), granular user governance, and deep TMS integrations - including direct TMS connectivity that lets operators book on CargoMART without ever leaving their own system

Large organizations do not switch platforms lightly. They audit security, test reliability, benchmark data quality, and pilot extensively before migrating global operations. Winning this segment — repeatedly and at accelerating speed — is the strongest external validation of CargoAi’s maturity, and a leading indicator of where the entire industry is heading. Just as importantly, these migrations are being absorbed without strain: deployment, onboarding, and customer success capacity have grown in step with demand, and the 98% renewal rate shows that service quality is holding as the platform scales.

From Marketplace to Autonomous Rate Management

Behind these switches lies a structural shift. In 2026, the market has moved beyond marketplace browsing towards autonomous Rate Management - intelligent systems embedded deep in the forwarder’s own workflow, where teams quote their shippers, manage the customer relationship, and let software orchestrate procurement in the background. With Model Context Protocol (MCP) compatibility across its full API suite - rates, capacity, booking, tracking, and quality data, far beyond booking alone - CargoAi has become the infrastructure this new model runs on.

And in an AI-driven world, the decisive advantage is data. CargoAi’s transaction and operational dataset - one of the largest in airfreight - powers the benchmarks its customers increasingly depend on: from market rate intelligence to the alert and predictive modules on tracking that flag exceptions before they become failures.

H1 2026: Innovation Shipped, Not Promised

The first half of 2026 also saw CargoAi extend its product lead with a series of industry-first launches:

• AI-agent-ready infrastructure: CargoCONNECT became the first air cargo API suite compatible with the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Through the “CargoAi MCP Connector”, freight forwarders and airlines can connect live rates, capacity, booking and tracking capabilities directly to their own AI agents and copilots.
• CargoAi AI Agent expansion: Building on the solution launched last year, CargoAi now supports end-to-end automation for quotation workflows, booking follow-up, shipment-status requests and operational communication. Designed for fast deployment, it can be used by operations teams without dedicated IT resources on any AI platform supporting the MCP standard, while maintaining human review and approval before operational actions are completed.
• CargoQUALITY commercial rollout: objective, data-driven station performance and timing analytics for airlines, ground handlers, and airports - bringing transparency to a segment of the industry that has never had it
• Deep TMS integration: one-click deep links from CargoWise into CargoMART, collapsing the distance between forwarders’ internal systems and real-time market capacity

Security and Data: The Foundation of an AI Pioneer

As a pioneer of AI in the air cargo industry, CargoAi has treated data quality and security as foundations, not afterthoughts, from day one. That discipline is formally certified: CargoAi holds ISO/IEC 27001 certification and its US equivalent, SOC 2 attestation, covering the full platform.

In H1 2026, CargoAi strengthened this foundation further with automatic user removal: when an employee leaves a company, their access is revoked automatically - on top of the existing SSO and OTP protections and the most advanced roles and permissions levels in the industry. It addresses a rightly growing concern among forwarders: without it, teams must manually maintain user accounts across as many as 100 airline websites every time someone leaves, with the risk that former employees can still access their previous company’s rates.

Increasingly, customers are drawing on this accumulated expertise for their own operations. CargoAi now actively helps forwarders and airlines strengthen their own data governance and security posture - turning years of in-house knowledge into a direct source of customer value, and setting a bar for data quality that the rest of the industry is still working towards.

CEO Statement

“The first half of 2026 proves the thesis we have been building towards since day one,” said Matt Petot, CEO of CargoAi. “When the largest and most demanding forwarders in the world switch to your platform - not as a pilot, but as their operating backbone - it tells you the market has reached its tipping point. We are ahead of our own plan on every line, we are fully profitable, and we are seeing massive traction precisely where it matters most. That is why we are not consolidating: we are accelerating.”

Full Acceleration: Strong Recruitment Plan for H2 2026

On the strength of this outperformance, CargoAi is announcing a significant recruitment plan for the second half of 2026, adding more than 10 new positions across sales, customer success and product development, in Europe, the Americas, APAC, and the Middle East.

The objective is threefold: accelerate the global deployment of CargoAi’s existing product suite to meet surging enterprise demand, bring forward the launch of the next wave of products already in development, and keep onboarding and support capacity ahead of customer growth - ensuring the pace of expansion never outruns the quality of service.

Join the fastest-growing digital platform in airfreight: CargoAi is actively looking for top talent and strategic partners to join this journey. Explore opportunities at cargoai.co/apply

A Clear Invitation to the Industry

Airfreight stakeholders still relying on legacy rate management solutions - or operating without meaningful AI in their workflows - are encouraged to request a demo of CargoAi’s proven, production-ready platform. The switch is already underway; the only question is timing.