World logistics faces unprecedented complexity as U.S. commerce in items surpasses $5.3T yearly, with imports from Asia and Latin America alone exceeding $2.3T. Regardless of this large scale, most importers nonetheless depend on emails, spreadsheets, and fragmented legacy methods to handle intermodal shipments on the container stage, leaving operators preventing fires with restricted instruments below excessive strain. Nauta addresses this problem with an AI-powered logistics orchestration platform that offers importers a single supply of fact and management middle for his or her world operations. The platform harmonizes information from emails, paperwork, and methods into actionable insights, enabling operators to scale back detention prices by as much as 80%, enhance productiveness by 30%, and enhance container processing occasions by 75%. Since launching in Q1 2025, the corporate serves importers throughout seven nations, working with main distributors of globally-recognized manufacturers together with New Stability, Ashley Furnishings HomeStore, L’Oréal, Modelo, and Moët & Chandon.
AlleyWatch sat down with Nauta CEO and Cofounder Valentina Jordan to study extra concerning the enterprise, its future plans, current funding spherical, and far, way more…
Who had been your buyers and the way a lot did you increase?
We raised a $7M seed spherical led by Assemble Capital and Predictive. Camila Key Saruhashi of Assemble Capital, who brings deep provide chain experience, led the spherical.
Inform us concerning the services or products that Nauta affords.
Nauta is the AI-powered logistics orchestration platform for importers. We’re remodeling world logistics by turning fragmented, hard-to-use information into actionable insights — beginning with the operators who handle the motion of products day-after-day.
What impressed the beginning of Nauta?
All of it begins with the operator’s expertise. In logistics, each container tells a narrative, and no two journeys are alike. The individuals managing these journeys are juggling numerous transferring components, typically below excessive strain, as a result of profitability and buyer satisfaction depend upon their selections. I’ve seen firsthand how a lot of their day is spent preventing fires with restricted instruments and fragmented information.
We began Nauta to alter that. Whereas we are able to’t cease exterior shocks like climate, tariffs, or geopolitical occasions, we are able to supply operators extra management of what they will truly management. Nauta makes an operator’s personal information actionable by unlocking the insights hidden of their inboxes, paperwork, and companion communications.
By utilizing AI to construction info, we give importers management over their operations and the power to handle cashflow with readability the place there was as soon as chaos, finally constructing resilience and stronger margins.
How is Nauta totally different?
Nauta was purpose-built for importers. Regardless of trillions of {dollars} in items transferring annually, most importers nonetheless depend on emails, spreadsheets, and siloed legacy methods to handle world shipments, which leaves them with out actual management.
Nauta adjustments that. By serving as an AI-powered management middle, we give importers a single supply of fact and the power to automate routine workflows. With versatile, agentic capabilities, Nauta helps operators act sooner, develop margins, and construct resilience within the face of rising world complexity.
What market does Nauta goal and the way massive is it?
We launched in Q1 2025 and already serve importers in seven nations, together with main distributors of worldwide acknowledged manufacturers equivalent to New Stability, Ashley Furnishings HomeStore, L’Oréal, Modelo, and Moët & Chandon. In the present day, we monitor and monitor greater than 5,000 containers every day throughout 190+ maritime strains.
Our main prospects are importers of non-durable items – suppose meals and beverage, retail, prescribed drugs. All industries the place deep chilly chain experience is required.
What’s your online business mannequin?
Nauta operates on a regular SaaS mannequin.
How are you making ready for a possible financial slowdown?
We’re targeted on progress. We’re signing main prospects, increasing into new markets, and persevering with to ship towards our bold product imaginative and prescient. By serving to importers defend margins and achieve management, we’re constructing a enterprise that issues in any financial atmosphere.
What was the funding course of like?
For us, the funding course of wasn’t nearly elevating capital; it was about discovering the proper companions. We prioritized buyers who understood that logistics and commerce are legacy industries in want of transformation, and who shared our long-term imaginative and prescient. That made the method much less transactional and extra about constructing lasting relationships. Ultimately, we had been searching for capital and the individuals who may very well be true companions within the journey.
What are the largest challenges that you just confronted whereas elevating capital?
The most important problem was being disciplined in saying ‘no.’ Whenever you’re elevating, it’s tempting to take any curiosity that comes your method, however we stayed targeted on discovering the proper companions who understood our house and believed in long-term worth creation. That required persistence and conviction, nevertheless it’s what finally gave us the investor group we wished.
What components about your online business led your buyers to jot down the test?
One of many causes that Camila Key Saruhashi of Assemble Capital, who has deep provide chain experience, led the spherical in Nauta is as a result of she views Nauta as a foundational firm within the new logistics tech stack. This new “tech stack for world commerce” is being formed by a singular second in time: quickly advancing AI capabilities intersecting with complicated commerce dynamics, equivalent to tariffs, regional conflicts, and inflation, which are set to remodel world commerce.
What are the milestones you intend to attain within the subsequent six months?
We’re targeted on three priorities: increasing within the US, launching into new world markets, and hiring the perfect expertise to assist us scale.
What recommendation are you able to supply corporations in New York that wouldn’t have a contemporary injection of capital within the financial institution?
My recommendation can be to remain targeted and never chase each shiny object that comes your method. With out contemporary capital, it’s much more necessary to be inventive and scrappy in the way you construct. Give attention to fixing one drawback very well, and pour your vitality into constructing wonderful relationships along with your first purchasers. For those who really ship worth for them, they’ll grow to be your largest promoters and, in some ways, your simplest gross sales staff. Capital helps, however readability, self-discipline, and buyer advocacy can take you simply as far within the early phases.
The place do you see the corporate going now over the close to time period?
As talked about, we’re targeted on three priorities over the following six months: increase within the US, launch into new world markets, and rent the perfect expertise to attain our mission.
What’s your favourite summer time vacation spot in and across the metropolis?
If I’m within the metropolis, Greenpoint in Brooklyn. Exterior of the Metropolis is Hudson Valley.
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