EXCLUSIVE: Gaia Dynamics uses AI to help shippers save on compliance, tariffs

Gaia Dynamics is using AI tools to speed up and streamline customs compliance.

Led by co-founder and CEO Emil Stefanutti and co-founder and entrepreneur Andrew Ng’s AI Fund, Gaia Dynamics is a technology platform that aims to simplify cross-border regulation compliance.

The Miami-based startup, which launched Tuesday, uses AI to automatically assign harmonized tariff schedule (HTS) codes to products at a 92% accuracy level within 30 seconds. 

It takes most people at least 15 minutes to complete the same task manually, the company said.

In addition, Gaia Dynamics’ platform can check for import and export tariffs on goods and help write descriptions of products being shipped, while focusing on reducing compliance checks for entire shipments from 10 hours down to two.

Gaia’s AI is also up to date with all regulatory changes and can predict anticipated risks and tariff adjustments, Steffanutti said.

Stefanutti said the idea for the company started when he and Ng talked about using AI to make it easier for people to ship products around the world.

“Andrew is one of the top people in AI, and we were talking one day and saying we should definitely do something about cross-border regulation compliance,” Stefanutti, co-founder and CEO of Gaia Dynamics, told FreightWaves in an interview. “When you get somebody like Andrew telling you he’s willing to start a company with you, then you jump right away.”

Ng is a globally recognized leader in AI and founder of DeepLearning.AI. He is also the executive chairman of LandingAI, general partner at AI Fund, chairman and co-founder of Coursera, and an adjunct professor at Stanford University’s computer science department.

“We talked about using modern AI to really try to make it easy or easier for all the people dealing with the amount of complexity that exists whenever you are moving products from one country to another,” Stefanutti said. “We’re essentially building what we want to become the standard platform for importers and exporters in the industry, for moving any product of any size from any country to any other destination. That’s really our goal.”

Related: Trump announces 25% tariffs on all imports of steel and aluminum

The AI Fund is a venture studio for AI-based companies founded by Ng in 2017. The AI Fund is backed by $176 million in capital by some of the leading VC firms and investors, including NEA, Sequoia and Greylock.

Gaia Dynamics is backed by $1.5 million in pre-seed from both the AI Fund and Zenda VC.

Stefanutti has more than 20 years of experience as an entrepreneur in technology, media and design. He co-founded ContractRoom, which was acquired by Mitratech in 2021.  

ContractRoom was a legal tech company disrupting how contract negotiations and management are done in business.

Prior to co-founding Gaia Dynamics, Stefanutti was the co-founder and CEO of Shoppr.tv, an ad tech startup focused on shoppable TV advertising for small businesses and direct-to-consumer brands.

Stefanutti said with all of the tariffs being announced by the Trump administration, having the right platform for cross-border compliance is more important than ever.

“Just when we thought it was big, Trump became president, and now it’s bigger than ever, and it doesn’t seem to be getting any smaller or any less complex anytime soon,” Stefanutti said.

More than 11 million maritime containers arrive at U.S. seaports every year, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. At land borders, another 11 million containers arrive by truck and 2.7 million by rail.

“The World Bank said that it takes 10 hours per shipment to deal with regulation and compliance,” Stefanutti said. “In the U.S. you take a blended hourly rate between lawyers and consultants and brokers. That’s roughly around $186 per hour, times 10 hours, times 56 million cargo shipments. That’s a crazy number. And that’s just the U.S. If you go to Mexico and Canada and China and Germany and then Japan and whatever it is, it just gets exponentially bigger. We believe that this is one of the most important economic challenges of our time. I don’t think I’ve seen much better use cases for generative AI and modern AI to then try and solve some of these issues.”

Gaia Dynamics’ platform is aimed at anyone who needs to ship products internationally.

“A lot of our customers are going to be brokers, consultants, and also you know actual importers and exporters, the actual manufacturers and brands that are struggling with this compliance,” Stefanutti said.

While AI tools could help streamline and speed up the global supply chain, Stefanutti said it will never completely replace the need for a human touch.

“We don’t want to automate everything, because logistics experts, these humans, are still needed,” Stefanutti said. “We want to accelerate things for sure, and we want to streamline things for sure. We don’t foresee anytime soon a future that doesn’t have brokers or that doesn’t have compliance experts.”

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