A supply chain visibility leader is restructuring to serve two distinct customer bases with dedicated products and go-to-market engines. Project44 announced it is separating into two focused businesses: project44 will continue serving enterprise shippers as a decision intelligence platform, offering TMS, visibility, yard management and last-mile solutions, while LSP44 launches as a dedicated, profitable, AI-native infrastructure business built for logistics service providers, according to FreightWaves.
A strategic split rooted in history
The decision traces back to project44's founding story and the realization that the company had strayed from its original customer base, said Jett McCandless, founder and CEO of both project44 and LSP44, in a news release sent to FreightWaves. When project44 launched in 2014, the logistics industry still ran on phone calls, faxes and electronic data interchange (EDI). Its first product was real-time API connectivity across the entire logistics workflow: rate quote, dispatch, visibility and documentation for the less-than-truckload market. Its first customers weren't shippers — they were logistics service providers like Worldwide Express, BlueGrace and DSV. "They built this network with us," McCandless said. "LSP44 is us coming home — handing the LSP industry more than a decade of network, data and trust, now in the form of AI agents that act, not just observe." According to McCandless, nine of the ten largest logistics service providers in the world now run on what will become LSP44 infrastructure.
Different languages, different products
As a venture-backed company seeking growth, project44 eventually expanded into the enterprise shipper market, building visibility applications and becoming the dominant player in that space. The 2020 pandemic created massive tailwinds for supply chain visibility. But shippers and LSPs speak entirely different languages, McCandless explained:
| Shipper priorities | LSP priorities |
|---|---|
| Improve OTIF | Do more dispatches with fewer people |
| Improve working capital | Find trucks at lower prices on transactional pricing |
| Reduce inventory | (Operations-focused) |
The context-switching proved increasingly difficult for sales and customer success teams. "Rather than dilute the messaging to both, I said, why don't we actually spin this out?" McCandless said. Thus, LSP44 was born out of a desire to better serve both customer bases more efficiently.
AI-native infrastructure for LSPs
At the heart of LSP44's value proposition is a pointed critique of the current AI landscape in logistics: AI agents without context aren't worthwhile. "AI agents without context are just guessing faster," McCandless told FreightWaves. Shippers have found that there's a lot of work to try to create context so that those agents can actually be effective. While a new generation of venture-funded startups has rushed into logistics AI and raised capital, McCandless noted that they don't all have context or distribution. The split creates two distinct go-to-market engines, two product roadmaps and two dedicated organizations, but they all run on the shared spine of the largest AI-native agent network, carrier API infrastructure and logistics data graph on Earth.
What this means for your procurement team: For procurement and logistics leaders at shippers, the restructuring means project44 will likely double down on decision intelligence for enterprise shippers, while LSP44 offers a specialized AI-native infrastructure for the carriers and 3PLs they rely on. The scale of the underlying network — including nine of the ten largest LSPs — could drive more consistent data quality and faster AI adoption across the supply chain. For LSP procurement teams evaluating technology, LSP44 represents a dedicated platform built from a decade of LSP-specific data and workflows, potentially reducing the need for custom integrations.
Forward outlook: Project44's split signals a maturing supply chain technology market where vendor specialization becomes critical. The success of LSP44 will depend on how quickly its AI agents deliver actionable results for LSP operations without requiring extensive context setup.
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