CommodityAI

What do they actually do

CommodityAI sells a SaaS platform that automates the document‑heavy parts of physical commodity trading. It ingests contracts, emails, bills of lading and PDFs, classifies them, extracts key fields into structured records, and groups them into shipment‑centric workspaces. From there, prebuilt workflows trigger tasks (e.g., vessel nominations, shipment status updates, invoice reconciliation), with exceptions routed to the right person. Data can be synced into CTRMs/ERPs; the company has announced an integration path with Agiblocks to embed automation on top of existing systems (site, YC profile, HN launch, Agiblocks/CTRM Center).

The product is used by operations, logistics, accounting/settlement and compliance teams at trading and trading‑adjacent firms across energy, metals and agriculture. The company points to an early deployment at one of the largest U.S. agricultural traders that uses CommodityAI at scale to classify and organize over a million documents (YC profile, HN launch).

The platform provides a secure, searchable vault with versioning and audit trails, and advertises enterprise controls (SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR) important for handling sensitive trade data. Typical workflow: ingest docs and emails, classify/extract key fields, validate and group into shipments, populate downstream systems or trigger in‑platform workflows, surface exceptions, and retain a long‑term audit‑ready archive (site).

Who are their target customer(s)

• Operations / shipment desk at a commodity trading firm: High volumes of contracts, BOLs and emails require manual reading and re‑typing, slowing bookings and causing missed or late actions. They need accurate extraction and shipment‑level organization to move faster.
• Logistics coordinator / voyage planner: Chasing missing or inconsistent documents across counterparties is time‑consuming, and there’s no single, searchable source of truth. They need a central workspace and automated exception routing.
• Accounting / settlement team: Invoice-to-contract/BOL matching is manual and error‑prone, leading to delays and rework. They need reliable extraction and auto‑population into ERP/CTRM to reduce reconciliation effort.
• Compliance / audit officer: Audit trails and versioned records are fragmented across folders and inboxes. They need a secure vault with traceability and retention controls to satisfy audits and policies.
• CTRM/ERP integrator or IT lead at a trading house: Downstream systems receive messy, inconsistent data from emails and PDFs, making integrations brittle and costly. They need clean, structured records and proven connectors to CTRMs/ERPs.

How would they acquire their first 10, 50, and 100 customers

• First 10: Founder‑led, high‑touch pilots using a customer’s live trade documents to map idiosyncratic fields and prove time/exception reduction in 4–8 weeks; leverage the early U.S. ag trader as a reference to close pilots into paid deployments (site, YC profile, HN launch).
• First 50: Package the pilot playbook into fixed onboarding offers and target mid‑size traders in ags, energy and metals; accelerate via CTRM/ERP partners (e.g., Agiblocks) to reduce integration work and procurement friction (site, CTRM Center).
• First 100: Scale with role‑based workflow templates, prebuilt connectors, documented SLAs and compliance artifacts (SOC 2/ISO/GDPR) to enable channel sales and an enterprise sales team, backed by reference customers and measurable ROI to shorten cycles (site, CTRM Center).

What is the rough total addressable market

Top-down context:

CommodityAI competes for a slice of software spend that sits above CTRMs/ERPs and within logistics/ops automation. CTRM/ETRM software is estimated at ~$2.78B in 2024, while logistics automation software is much larger at ~$88B in 2025 (VMR, Fortune Business Insights).

Bottom-up calculation:

Target pool is concentrated among hundreds to a few thousand firms globally. A practical sales model of 500–2,000 customers at ~$25k–$200k ARR yields ~$12.5M–$400M; a mid‑case of 1,000 customers at ~$100k implies ~$100M SAM (UNCTAD concentration, CTRM pricing anchor).

Assumptions:

• 5–15% of CTRM spend is addressable by document/ops automation; 0.5–2% of logistics automation is relevant in an expansion scenario.
• There are ~500–2,000 targetable mid‑to‑large commodity firms globally; buyer budgets are concentrated among larger traders.
• Per‑customer ARR ranges from ~$25k (small teams) to ~$200k (enterprise), bounded by CTRM cost bands.

Who are some of their notable competitors

• ClearDox: Purpose‑built commodities ops platform that digitizes trade documents and automates reconciliation and settlement for energy and ags; a direct domain competitor on document extraction and ops workflows (site).
• Rossum: Horizontal intelligent document processing used in logistics and supply chains (bills of lading, invoices, customs docs); can be adopted by trading houses as a general IDP layer (logistics & transportation).
• SEDNA: Data‑driven team email and document hub used by maritime and commodity ops teams to centralize communications and link into ops systems—overlaps as the system‑of‑record for shipment emails/docs (Stream).
• VAKT: Post‑trade platform for physical oil that digitizes confirmations and logistics workflows with blockchain and AI; overlaps in digitizing contracts/actuals and reducing manual post‑trade work (site).
• Quoreka (Eka CTRM): CTRM suite covering trading, risk and operations across ags/energy/metals; incumbents can bundle document and workflow features that reduce room for standalone automation tools (Eka CTRM).