Starboard – Weekly Recap

Starboard is a logistics technology company specializing in AI-driven pricing and quoting tools for freight forwarders, and this weekly summary reviews its recent commercial and market-facing activity. The company is preparing a strong presence at the TPM26 conference in Long Beach from March 1–4, where it will run live demonstrations of its rate-sourcing platform to prospective customers.

At TPM26, Starboard plans to highlight an AI-powered tool that sources competitive freight rates for quotes within seconds, with a focus on productivity gains and improved deal conversion. By targeting staff responsible for rate discovery and quoting workflows, the firm is positioning its software as a way for forwarders to win more business while reducing manual effort and shortening response times.

The platform aggregates spot and contract rates from major airlines and ocean carriers into a single interface, allowing users to compare options, adjust margins, and generate customer-ready quotes from one screen. Starboard’s messaging centers on speed, accuracy, and margin enhancement in a complex and volatile rate environment, which is increasingly challenging for logistics providers to manage manually.

In parallel, Starboard has commented on shifting U.S. trade policy, including a Supreme Court decision striking down certain tariffs and the introduction of a new global tariff under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. The company notes that the 150-day approval window and potential legal challenges are contributing to heightened volatility in global trade and freight markets and complicating price-setting for forwarders.

This volatility increases the difficulty of maintaining margins as duties and trade flows change in real time, reinforcing the need for faster, tariff-aware quoting and dynamic pricing tools. Starboard argues that systems capable of rapidly ingesting regulatory changes and reflecting them in customer quotes, while maintaining robust audit trails, can become a key competitive differentiator for logistics providers.

Across the week’s communications, Starboard linked macro-level uncertainty to growing demand for real-time rate management and automation in freight pricing. Overall, the company’s upcoming TPM26 presence, coupled with a sharpened go-to-market narrative around volatility-driven demand, underscores a strategic push to deepen adoption of its AI-enabled platform and solidify its position in digital freight technology.