Published to clients: February 19, 2025                                               ID: 2056        

Published to readers: February 20, 2025              

Published to Email Whispers: May 28, 2025

Publicly Published with video edition: May 29, 2025

Analyst: Dr. Doreen Galli

Photojournalist: Dr. Doreen Galli

ABSTRACT

Manifest 2025 allowed over 6,000 attendees to see more than 1,500+ shippers +1200+ startups and investors + 300 Speakers with over 50 countries represented. Key highlights included a case study on supplier globalization, a new AI tool for supply chain communication, and comprehensive logistics solutions. A new international bridge, opening in Fall 2025, promises to streamline trade between the USA and Canada. Innovations in urban deliveries, last-mile solutions, and digital verification were also presented. Advances in data and inventory management were demonstrated, along with AI-driven solutions aimed at optimizing logistics. The event emphasized the industry’s move towards digitization and automation.

The Conference

• Manifest 2025 allowed over 6,000 attendees to see more than 1,500+ shippers, 1200+ startups and investors, and 300 Speakers with over 50 countries represented.

Cautions

If you were speaking on stage, the terms and conditions of the conference meant that no one, even members of the press, were able to capture even a minute of any session. It is hoped next year the conference will adopt more standard T&C. In the meantime, we did capture some session summaries from speakers.

Conference Vibe

After more than 60 videos, endless shorts forthcoming, and research for 4 different research documents including this one, our coverage of Manifest 2025 closes. Manifest 2025 allowed over 6,000 attendees to see more than 1,500⁺ shippers, 1200⁺ startups and investors, and 300 Speakers with over 50 countries represented.  The Expo Hall* was full of suppliers across the supply chain and logistics. The event featured a full breakfast as well as a Waffle Station. One could also purchase their breakfast or coffee at the Venetian Bistro. If you were still hungry, it wasn’t long before the extensive lunch was also available. Admittedly, the dedicated pasta station was also a huge hit with the attendees. However, of all the conference food available at the Venetian, it is their desserts that are always the biggest of hit – yes they taste as good as they look! If logistics and supply chain are in your interest area, enjoy and save the entire Manifest playlist so you will be notified when related shorts are posted as well. If you are not a client, it is even more critical you like your favorite videos, so we understand what technology you are most interested in seeing us capture.

The event opened on Monday with a lot of energy and select sessions. The registration lines moved quickly. Unfortunately, we were not able to record any sessions due to the terms and conditions of the conference. Many sponsors seemed quite upset and are hoping this is fixed for future years. We were able to conduct research for three forthcoming Whisper Reports for our clients. The playlists are unlisted but available and will eventually fill in with the video version of the report so you may wish to bookmark these playlists.

1. Whisper Report: How can we manage tariff costs in our supply chain?
2. Whisper Report: What are the biggest challenges of using generative AI in logistics?
3. Whisper Report: Can generative AI prevent supply chain disruptions?

Moving Products

One persistent truth at any conference on supply chain and logistics, there is a knowledge set shared strictly about getting things from point A to point B. While the T&C of the conference meant no one could capture the sessions, we were able to get an exclusive overview of the Super Shipper Case Study by Alibaba straight from the executive at Alibaba.com. Titled, “Shipper Case Study, Globalization of Suppliers” announced several solutions for finding sources. The selections are customizable, extensive, b2b, and are meant to enable optimized scale for even the most sophisticated, and dynamic shipping environments of 2025. A new AI support communication tool, AXCIO, was announced that enables a conversational interface for your supply chain and logistics needs. Alibaba.com marketplace has also received significant update for its fulfilment capabilities particularly for cross border fulfilment. Capabilities include direct access to the logistics marketplace with the ability to get real-time live quotes.

With explicit and extensive hubs in Reno, Dallas, and Atlanta, ITS shared their end-to-end logistics capabilities and solutions. If you happen to be a freight carriers and your questions is how best to move freight from A to B  – Optimal Dynamics has software designed to help you answer that question if you should use your assets or those of others. Nothing saves time going from point A to point B like a direct route! The Gordie Howe International Bridge announced it is opening Fall of 225. Connecting I-75 in the USA directly to Highway 401 in Canada minus 7 traffic lights!  This new direct route will save time and money through the busiest commercial land border crossing between the USA and Canada.

Urban deliveries can be difficult and are frequently burdened with the congestion of the population. An exciting solution by Aeroscraft was on exhibit. Aeroscraft is an EVTOL – electric, vertical take-off and landing – like INVO EVTOL we saw at CES. In contrast to INVO, the Aeroscraft is a not a flying saucer for personal transport but rather a Blimp with the smallest model capable of a 9-ton payload – yes 9 tons.

Furthermore, it launches with a fleet of drones, their chargers, their operators, and massive payload. Once above the urban area, the drone operators get busy with line-of-sight capability delivery packages to the urban area below without adding to traffic! For additional research on drones, see Conference Whispers: Commercial UAV Expo.

Another challenging space involves delivering small products and the last mile. Hailify is a tech company that focuses on last mile of packages smaller than 2 shoe boxes and under 20 pounds. They focused heavily on the integration for small regional delivery. Likewise, TUSK provides an integrated network of the 9 top tier carriers into a single API, unified pick-up, contracts, everything creating a simple process to leverage multiple logistic solutions. Once you accomplish that last mile, the challenge for many solutions involves the last 10 feet. In theory, the network can be fully automated but how do you get the package from the vehicle to the person expecting the delivery? River.ai demonstrated their fully autonomous solution that can climb any stairs in any weather to take a package from a truck and hand it to a human expecting the delivery or accept a package from the human. That leaves one critical step left – verifying that the recipient and the related supply chain documents are accurate. Fortunately, the expo hall featured Trustd,  a digital verification and identity platform designed for supply chain and logistics.. This solution enables not only verification of humans but document identity as well. Trustd provided an exclusive overview of their talk to TBW Advisors. In their session, “Platform Security in the age of Fraud”, Trustd explained why it is not only critical to verify the carrier, but all of the ‘paperwork’ must be authenticated. Was there supposed to be 3 crates or 6? How many crates did they pick up? Getting that information wrong can be expensive and crime rings have targeted this space. Additional research on Identity and Access Management is available in Conference Whispers: Identiverse 2024.

Clean Data and Digitization

During our coverage of Conference Whispers: ConExpo in 2023, we observed the fundamental advantages of construction over manufacturing for digital transformation. Thus, we were very interested to understand the progress being made in supply chain and logistics towards cleaning up the data and digitization. As a first step, one can add intelligence to your existing forklifts with Slamcore. Their solution doesn’t require new forklifts but adds a camera, related sensors, and intelligent platform to suddenly provide forklift visibility to your facility. Barcode scanning and related manual data entry is frequently another troubled data spot – unless you have the right technology. The complex array of barcode layouts can make it extremely difficult to efficiently capture the alphanumeric text. This information represents the inventory and must be digitized accurately. Cloud 9 provided TBW Advisors LLC with an exclusive demonstration how their solution can efficiently handle this complex array of barcodes in the logistics space. Data regarding the size and weight accuracy of inventory is one of the critical pieces of data required in the logistics space. Cubiscan was one of the solutions exhibited that shared their approach involving sensors, cameras, and some intelligent algorithms to provide you what you need.

Not sure if the address is accurate and want to ensure the recipient didn’t move? Woolpert Digital Innovations is a Google location partner and can help you integrate with anything and everything Google offers in this space. Want to go more granular? Sensos shared their exciting innovations that help one track not only package’s location, but the condition of the package in transport with the convenience of a tiny label that has embedded cellular! As a former AT&T strategist, this capability used to come in something analogous to in size and agility matched only by the original brick cellular phones!

Inventory is a critical data space in supply chain and logistics. Fortunately 2025 includes autonomous inventory solutions such as the exciting solution from Dane Technologies. Such solutions leverage cameras for each shelf and autonomous technology to navigate the warehouse. Understanding the limits and how they match to your inventory is critical to select the right solution for your warehouse. We were also able to catch the demonstration of Dexory robot in action on the exhibit floor. Of course if you do not want to do inventory but rather pick the inventory for a customer order, then Brightpick is someone to evaluate. Leveraging drones for inventory management vs a moving robot, the Swiss Tech solution by Verity is something to also consider if you are seeking to get efficient clean inventory data.

If one prefers to just bring someone in to assist in cleaning up the data space, plenty of integrators were also on hand. WMS specializes in business process management for the supply chain space. WMS capabilities include digitizing everything to prepare and leverage the new generation of logistic intelligent solutions. 4flow is another example of someone that was available to enable digital transformation in this sector.

AI, Robotics, and Automation

If an organization is fortunate enough to have their end-to-end data clean enough for AI, there are solutions ready to help you become optimal! Want predictive capabilities for freight costs and visibility to your buying power? Greenscreens.ai is a truly predictive solution with an impressive accuracy rate. Vizion provides container intelligence, tracking, and monitoring through its comprehensive consolidated APIs for most freight carriers. The goals are accuracy in arrival time. For those with clean data and seeking to move all the way to agentic AI in logistics, Arnata shared their solution. If you have a factory full of robots and you simply want to know where they all are on a single pane of glass? InOrbit.ai is all about simplifying robot orchestration and giving you that exact unified view. We have exclusive interview with Dexory to understand how their inventory visibility robot works. TBW Advisors LLC was also able to capture an exclusive description regarding the capabilities of Rivr.ai that isn’t stumped by the stairs leading up to your front door! Admittedly, of all the autonomous solutions, the most jaw dropping was the loading of a semi-truck trailer in 5 minutes flat. From the financial reduction of risk to the lessoning of burden on hard-to-find workers, a case study on Slip Robotics in a distribution center would be quite an interesting read.

Next Year’s Conference  

The Manifest 2026 conference will be held in Las Vegas, Nevada. The announced dates are February 9-11, 2026.

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