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“What companies really want is… outcomes,” McCandless said. (Just_Super/Getty Images)

Project44 advanced its strategy to incorporate artificial intelligence agents with orchestration capabilities by acquiring one of its vendors, LunaPath.ai, the company announced April 9.

LunaPath is an AI-native logistics automation company specializing in orchestration- and execution-focused agents. The all-cash transaction aims to incorporate those capabilities to advance AI agent orchestration across the supply chain while improving operations and insights. Project44 had already partnered with the company, along with several other vendors.

“It really required a lot of different vendors to get the job done,” said Project44 CEO Jett McCandless. “As time went on, we started looking at the performance more and more, and what we realized is that one of the companies really stood out as just being reliable and cost-effective and could really just get the job done. That was LunaPath.”

LunaPath execution agents advance the multivendor orchestration strategy by coordinating specialized agents across workflows. This is done through a centralized operational layer that utilizes a supply chain data graph rather than an overall AI provider. Project44 customers can then deploy purpose-built agents while maintaining a unified intelligence platform.

“We built LunaPath to automate the operational work that slows logistics teams down,” LunaPath founder Abhishek Porwal said. “Project44’s supply chain data graph gives our agents the context they were missing. Together, we are enabling AI that does not just recommend what to do but understands when and how to do it.”

Project44 had originally partnered with about eight vendors that provided agents. This left the company to focus elsewhere, including the orchestration of the agents. This was eventually reduced to the three best-performing vendors. The ability to experiment and improve the coordination between the agents led the company to bring some core AI operations in-house.

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“We could just see that this was a big part of our future,” McCandless said. “When it became clear that some of this stuff was just commoditized, it seemed silly for us to pay a vendor their gross margin on top of it, and then it also became clear that we could have faster innovation cycles if we owned one of the vendors.”

McCandless has seen the technology drive value for his company and his customers, but he is cautious that there is a risk of AI fatigue among companies that aren’t seeing the results they were promised.

“What companies really want is… outcomes,” McCandless said. “You’re seeing pricing go more towards outcomes, you see us go more towards pricing of outcomes with customers. The key pillar to create outcomes is to be able to orchestrate all of these agents.”

Project44 noted this is the second strategic AI acquisition. ClearMetal was the first in 2021. The technology has since become a critical part of its operations, including predictive arrival times, insights and navigating supply chain disruptions. LunaPath builds on that by combining its agents with that context-based AI model at the orchestration and execution level.

“AI without context creates noise, not outcomes,” said Jonathan Scherr, chief strategy and operations officer at Project44. “What makes Project44 different is the supply chain graph we have built over more than a decade. It gives AI agents the context they need to act with precision. LunaPath brings execution into that graph, turning intelligence into real-time action across the supply chain.”