Kessel Run Industries
The first AI-native shipbroking platform — reading the unstructured chatter of a broker's day and turning it into structured market intelligence. Acquired in 2025.
Kessel Run Industries built what it called “the world’s first AI-native shipbroking platform” — software that reads the unstructured flow of a broker’s day, the Microsoft Teams messages where fixtures, cargoes, and rates actually get negotiated, and turns it automatically into structured market intelligence. Built by maritime professionals, for maritime professionals.
Shipbroking is one of the last great oral markets: most of the signal lives in chat and email and never reaches a database. The bet was that an AI-native system could sit inside that flow and make the tacit market legible — without asking brokers to change how they work.
Co-founded in 2025, the company was acquired the same year. This entry documents it: the thesis that the best maritime intelligence is hiding in plain text, the product built on it, and a fast exit into a larger platform.