Augment: Innovation at the Logistics Front Line

When AI changes the business landscape and the rules of software development overnight, what’s a serial entrepreneur to do? Start another company, of course. 

After launching and selling three startups, Augment CEO Harish Abbott thought he had seen — and been responsible for – enough disruption in the logistics industry for a lifetime. The Internet, mobile technology, machine learning; Harish harnessed them all to scale UGenie.com (acquired by Lulu.com), Symphony Commerce (acquired by Quantum Retail), and Deliverr (acquired by Shopify). But AI is changing the playbook entirely — both in the capabilities startups like Augment can provide to customers and how they’re run. 

“This is the most transformation I have seen in how you run a business, and I am getting humbled every single day,” he said in a recent interview. “The marginal cost of writing software is trending down to zero. The way teams are organized are dramatically different. Now, you're starting off with a working prototype, putting it in front of customers to get their feedback, and iterating rapidly.” 

With Augment, Harish and team are helping those at the frontlines of complex enterprise supply chains make use of their valuable skillsets for more than answering emails. 

“A single operator deals with close to 400 to 500 emails a day. Most of this time, their job is a human router, taking data from one place and sending it to another,” said Harish.” We’re just wasting human potential, we’re wasting company potential, and it adds up to wasted economic opportunity.” 

Augment’s AI agent, Augie, helps make sense of immense amounts of data to bring certainty to a sector in a constant state of disruption.

“If you look around you, everything is at some point touched by logistics — your coffee, your coffee mug, your computer. It's one of the most critical industries. Civilizations all start by trade, and trade starts by logistics,” said Harish. “With AI, we’re moving from making humans slightly more productive to taking work off their plate, and that's a profound change. We’re going to use human potential to its highest degree possible.” 

‍‘Plans are not as predictable as you would like them to be’ 

Supply chain operations are some of the most complex within an organization. With tens of thousands suppliers operating across a global shipping network, something is always going wrong.

“Plans are not as predictable as you would like them to be. At any moment, some part of this very complex supply chain is getting disrupted for one reason or another. When that happens, how do you react?,” said Harish. 

But with so many participants, the question for Harish became: Who to help first? It’s why, before launching Augment, he shadowed different roles across logistics. And eventually, Harish honed in on the front lines: the operators. Tasked with managing any logistics and supply chain hiccups, most operators are fielding calls or emails instead of optimizing routes, reducing risk, or pro-actively identifying or planning for potential problems.

Augment’s AI agents handle these rote responsibilities, and alert operators when manual intervention is necessary. As a result, humans can focus on higher-order responsibilities, like using Augie to analyze the impact of severe weather over the past few months and formulate a plan to minimize disruption during future storms. 

“AI can surface the data and insights needed to plan, then human judgement can be relied on to act,” said Harish. 

Augie is built to connect to the broad network of different IT systems that ultimately support the global logistics industry. As a result, it has as much context as human operators. 

“The logistics network is global. As many as thirty companies might have coordinated for a shirt to be delivered to someone. For the first time, we can make information transfer instant,” said Harish. 

‍Transformation is a daunting task 

Beyond the impact to the logistics industry, AI is also a new factor Harish must contend with as a founder and CEO. What used to take dozens of employees weeks of work can be done by small teams in days or hours, helping businesses like Augment scale at incredible speed. In fact, internally, Augment’s over 100 engineers no longer write code, according to Harish. They’re supervising the agents that write the code.

While he’s well-accustomed to moving fast, at times even Harish is taken aback by the speed: “This is the most transformation I have seen in my lifetime. The jobs, the people in your company are going to look materially different in a few years time, and it's a daunting task for anyone,” he said.

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Dell Technologies Capital first invested in Augment in the company's Series A in 2025.