# Cervo AI

Aiolum story: https://aiolum.com/story/cervo-ai/ · added 2026-11-08 · updated 2026-11-08

**In short.** Cervo AI (AI that drafts submission-ready US customs entries from shipping documents for customs brokers, USA): Acquired by Altana with a milestone-based price, July 2026. Evidence grade E: no revenue figure was checked. Team: 3 co-founders named by the buyer (two co-CEOs and a CTO); 11 employees at the sale in July 2026, after a US$5M seed round (Dealroom). Launched August 2024; sold 23 months after launch.

AI that drafts submission-ready US customs entries from shipping documents for customs brokers · USA · AI-native · started small, grew after funding · sold · group: Operations, logistics and trades

- Outcome: Acquired by Altana with a milestone-based price, July 2026 (evidence grade of the headline number: E; no revenue figure)
- Launch: August 2024; months from launch to the outcome: 23
- Team: 3 co-founders named by the buyer (two co-CEOs and a CTO); 11 employees at the sale in July 2026, after a US$5M seed round (Dealroom)
- Outside funding: US$5M seed round: Dealroom dates it 2024, VCBacked dates it July 2025 (HOF Capital, Zetta Venture Partners, Crossbeam Venture Partners); sold to Altana in July 2026
- Main factor: One painful filing task
- Meters, 1 to 4: evidence strength 1, copyable pattern 1, capital needed 3
- Tags: AI-native, Small team, Funded, Exit, B2B, Logistics

Links:

- Visit usecervo.com: https://usecervo.com/

**The product.** A customs broker uploads invoices and packing lists, or forwards the email they came with. Cervo reads the documents, fills in the fields of a US customs entry, suggests tariff codes and extra duties, and lists the permits that other agencies require. An entry writer at the brokerage checks the draft and sends it to the customs system with one click.

**Why it worked.** It chose one small, repeated and rule-heavy task, the writing of customs entries, at a time when new US tariffs made that task larger and harder. The AI makes a draft and the licensed broker keeps the final check, which made the product easy to accept. A larger trade-software company bought it to complete its own customs workflow.

Evidence grades: A = disclosed by a public company, a filing or a payment processor, or verified by one; B = two or more independent reports agree, or a journalist confirmed it; C = a founder claim that no one else verified; D = reported, not verified: one founder claim or a third-party estimate with no second source; E = no revenue figure found, so the headline is a non-money fact and the other facts carry their own grades; calc = computed on this page from graded facts.

## Summary

Cervo AI sells software to customs brokers, licensed companies that prepare the legal filings that let imported goods cross the US border. The main filing is the customs entry: a form (CBP Form 7501 in the United States) that states what the goods are, where they come from, which tariff code applies and how much duty is owed. Cervo uses agentic AI, software that performs several steps of a task on its own, to read the shipping documents and write a draft entry that a person then checks.

Three co-founders started it: Thomas Jiang and Troy Shen, the two co-CEOs, and Jason Kurohara, the CTO, as the buyer's announcement names them. The first archived copy of the website, from August 2024, shows only a placeholder page; in March 2025 the site sold AI data entry for operations teams in general; by 2026 it sold only to customs brokers, with four case studies from small US brokerages dated April 2026. Dealroom wrote that the company raised a US$5 million seed round and had 11 employees when Altana, a trade-software company, announced on 21 July 2026 that it had acquired Cervo.

This page grades every number by its evidence. The sale itself is grade A, from the buyer's own announcement. The reported deal value is grade D: Dealroom reported on 21 July 2026 that the cash-and-equity deal "could be worth more than $100 million if performance milestones are met", while the buyer's release gave no amount and Pulse 2.0 wrote that the financial terms were not disclosed. It is not a fixed sale price. The page also shows three failed startups that tried to automate logistics paperwork and planning before language models could read the documents.

## Pricing

Cervo pricing page, read 8 November 2026: one custom plan, no published price

| Plan | Per month, billed yearly (US$) | Per month, billed monthly (US$) | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Custom | custom | custom | Priced individually; onboarding, custom integrations, role-based permissions, dedicated support |

The pricing page shows a single plan, "Custom, Priced Individually", with white-glove onboarding, custom integrations, role-based permissions and dedicated support, and a button to request a demo. No downloaded source gives a price. The home page also offers a free tariff simulator.

## How much did Cervo AI make, and what was it sold for? The numbers, graded

A three-founder customs-software startup, sold to Altana 23 months after its first archived website, in a deal that Dealroom reported could top US$100 million if milestones are met

| Fact | Value | Grade | Note | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reported deal value, 21 July 2026 | could be worth more than US$100 million if performance milestones are met | D | Dealroom News, 21 July 2026: "The transaction, Altana's first acquisition, combines cash and equity and could be worth more than $100 million if performance milestones are met." Dealroom does not say who gave the figure and links a press report on MSN. The buyer's release gives no amount, and Pulse 2.0 writes "Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed." The fixed part of the price is not known. | [2, 1, 3] |
| Buyer and date of the sale | Altana, announced 21 July 2026 | A | Altana's release: "today announced it has acquired Cervo AI, whose agentic customs entry writer prepares submission-ready customs entries for global logistics providers." It was Altana's first acquisition, according to Dealroom. | [1, 2] |
| Co-founders | 3: Thomas Jiang (co-CEO), Troy Shen (co-CEO), Jason Kurohara (CTO) | A | Named with their titles in the buyer's release and again by Pulse 2.0. No source gives a headcount at the start other than the three co-founders. | [1, 3] |
| Founded | 2024 | D | Dealroom: "Cervo, founded in 2024". The first archived copy of usecervo.com is dated 26 August 2024 and carries "© 2024 Cervo AI". | [2, 10] |
| Employees at the sale | 11 | D | Dealroom: Cervo "brings 11 employees to Altana's roughly 300-person workforce." One source. | [2] |
| Seed funding | US$5 million | D | Dealroom writes that Cervo "raised $5 million in seed funding in 2024". VCBacked lists a US$5.0 million seed round dated July 2025 with HOF Capital, Zetta Venture Partners and Crossbeam Venture Partners. The amount agrees; the date does not. | [2, 9] |
| Customers with case studies, April 2026 | 4 US customs brokerages | C | Krenz & Hannan, PG Customs Brokers (Laredo, Texas), M. J. Carrillo and EMD Customs (California), each with a case study dated April 2026 on the company's site. The case studies give no contract values. | [5, 6, 7] |
| Time per entry at PG Customs Brokers | from about 30 minutes to about 9 minutes | C | Company case study with a quote from the brokerage's owner: a 70% reduction and 3.3 times the throughput per entry writer. | [6] |
| Processing time at EMD Customs | up to 75% less per entry | C | Company case study. EMD is a family-run brokerage with "a lean team of three"; before Cervo it had tried ChatGPT and Gemini for tariff classification. | [7] |
| Company claims on the home page, November 2026 | "over 40,000 hours" saved; "<5 min" from documents to a draft entry; "$40,000+ saved per operator" | C | The company's own figures, with no method given. | [4] |
| Logos on the home page | 14 companies | C | Customs brokerages and logistics companies. Four of them have case studies; the others appear only as logos. | [4, 5] |
| Months from the first archived website to the sale | 23 | calc | Calculated: August 2024 to July 2026. | [10, 1] |

How to read this table: a grade A value comes from the buyer's own announcement. A grade B value comes from independent press. A grade C value is the company's own claim on its website. A grade D value is reported by one source and not confirmed by a second one. A "calc" value was computed on this page from the rows above it.

## When did Cervo AI launch, and how did it grow? Timeline

From a placeholder website in August 2024 to a sale in July 2026. Each entry carries its grade.

- **2024** (grade D [2]): Cervo is founded in New York, according to Dealroom.
- **26 August 2024** (grade C [10]): First archived copy of usecervo.com: a placeholder page, "Making your work easier and faster.", with a login button.
- **22 March 2025** (grade C [11]): The archived site sells AI data entry and no-code workflows to operations teams in general: "Reduce manual data entry by up to 90%".
- **2024 or July 2025** (grade D [2, 9]): Seed round of US$5 million. Dealroom dates it 2024; VCBacked dates it July 2025 and names HOF Capital, Zetta Venture Partners and Crossbeam Venture Partners.
- **April 2026** (grade C [5]): Four case studies with US customs brokerages are published on the site, the product now aimed only at customs brokers.
- **21 July 2026** (grade A [1, 2]): Altana announces that it has acquired Cervo. Dealroom reports a cash-and-equity deal that could be worth more than US$100 million if milestones are met, and 11 employees.
- **22 July 2026** (grade B [3]): Pulse 2.0 writes that the financial terms were not disclosed and that Cervo's founding team will join Altana.
- **8 November 2026** (grade C [4, 8]): usecervo.com is live with the banner "Cervo has been acquired by Altana Technologies" and a custom-priced plan.

## Why did Cervo AI work?

### One filing, many documents

A customs entry is one form, but its data sits in invoices, packing lists, emails and electronic data feeds. Each field follows written rules: tariff codes, country of origin, extra duties. That makes it a good task for a language model, which can read messy documents, and a bad task for a human, who copies the same fields all day.

### The broker keeps the final check

Cervo makes a draft, not a filing. The entry appears as a task, a licensed entry writer reviews it, and only then is it sent on. The company's FAQ says that every extraction comes with a confidence score and the reasoning behind it, so the reviewer knows where to look. In a regulated filing this lowers the risk for the buyer and makes the product easier to accept.

### Work inside the systems brokers already use

Brokers file through the ABI (Automated Broker Interface), the US Customs link that their filing software uses. Cervo pushes its drafts into those programs (CargoWise, NetCHB, OneView, E2Open) instead of replacing them, so a brokerage can try it without changing its main system.

### Tariff changes made the work larger

Dealroom reported in July 2026 that US Customs had handled more than 63 million entry summaries in the fiscal year so far, 27% more than in all of the previous year, after tariff increases and the end of the duty-free rule for goods worth US$800 or less. More entries and more complex duties mean more work per entry, which is the work Cervo automates.

## How it was built

These details come from the company's own pages, from archived copies of its site and from the page code of those copies. The page code is grade B; the company's descriptions are grade C.

- The first archived site, August 2024, is a Next.js web app that still has the framework's default page title, "Create Next App".
- The page code of March 2025 loads Clerk for sign-in, PostHog for product analytics and Sentry for error reports.
- The workflow, as the company describes it: an entry writer uploads documents or forwards an email; the AI extracts the fields, suggests HTS codes (Harmonized Tariff Schedule numbers that decide the duty rate), adds the extra duties of Chapter 99, and checks which PGA filings (data for partner government agencies such as the FDA) the goods need.
- Approved drafts go to the broker's ABI software and from there to ACE, the US Customs electronic system.
- A parts library learns each importer's products as entries are completed, and an "agent studio" stores each importer's own rules and steps.
- The company states that it is SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO/IEC 27001 compliant, two security audits that larger logistics customers ask for.
- The product became more specific over time: general AI data entry for operations teams in March 2025, customs brokers only by 2026.

Sources: [4, 6, 7, 10, 11]

## Who tried this before Cervo AI, and why did they fail?

Three companies in our database of failed startups tried to automate logistics work with software before language models could read shipping documents. The values below are from that database and are not independently verified.

The failed startups come from our database of dead startups, retold here in our own words; Its entries are AI-assisted summaries of public sources, so they carry no evidence grade.

### Shipitwise (2015 to 2018; funding US$290K; cause: Unit Economics)

- Promise: Automated freight quotes and logistics management for small companies without their own shipping department.
- Why it died: The database says it depended on unreliable outside logistics partners and spent its money on complex integrations.
- Record: 

### Pando (2018 to 2024; funding US$35M; cause: Unit Economics)

- Promise: An AI supply-chain platform for real-time tracking and forecasts across global logistics networks.
- Why it died: The database says a broad platform sold into a specialist market needed 12-month implementations and heavy data integration, and the service work ruined its unit economics.
- Record: 

### Keychain Logistics (2012 to 2015; funding US$500K; cause: Competition)

- Promise: Matching truck drivers with shippers to cut empty miles.
- Why it died: The database says larger funded rivals such as Convoy and Uber Freight outpaced its technology, and the money ran out before it could grow.
- Record: 

## What changed

Older logistics software needed clean, structured data before it could do anything. Pando, in the failed-startup database record, spent 12 months per customer on implementation and data integration, and Shipitwise spent its money on integrations with partners. The documents themselves, invoices and packing lists in PDF form or inside emails, still had to be typed in by people.

Language models can read those documents directly. Cervo did not ask brokers to clean their data or change their filing software: it read the documents as they came, wrote a draft, and sent it into the program the broker already used. That made one specific product enough for a three-founder start, and the July 2026 sale shows that a larger platform wanted the piece rather than build it.

## Can one person copy Cervo AI now?

**Verdict: Hard for one person. The pattern, yes.**

Cervo had three co-founders, outside money and 11 people by the sale, and customs work needs security audits, filing-software integrations and knowledge of tariff rules. A solo founder cannot copy the whole company quickly. The pattern behind it is open to a small team: one regulated form, many messy documents, and a human who keeps the final check.

1. Find a filing or form that professionals fill in by hand from documents, under written rules, many times a day.
2. Make the AI produce a draft for review, with a confidence score, instead of a final filing.
3. Send the draft into the software the customer already uses; do not ask them to replace it.
4. Collect case studies with named customers and measured time savings before you scale the sales effort.

**What is still open.** The same draft-and-review pattern fits other border and trade filings outside the United States, such as import declarations in other countries, and other regulated forms that brokers or agents prepare from documents, for example export paperwork or duty-drawback claims.

## What could go wrong for Cervo AI?

- **What is not verified.** The reported deal value rests on one source: Dealroom News reported on 21 July 2026 that the cash-and-equity deal "could be worth more than $100 million if performance milestones are met", without naming who gave the figure; it links a press report on MSN. Altana's own release gives no amount, and Pulse 2.0 (22 July 2026) writes that the financial terms were not disclosed. The amount depends on milestones, so the money actually paid may be much lower, and the fixed part is not known. No revenue figure was found: no payment-processor profile, founder interview with figures or filing. The 11 employees and the founding year come only from Dealroom, and the seed round is dated 2024 by Dealroom and July 2025 by VCBacked. Dealroom also writes "Its customers include A.P. Moller-Maersk, US Customs and Border Protection, Boston Scientific, and L.L.Bean" right after a sentence about Altana's workforce; Altana's own release says U.S. CBP uses Altana and links an Altana and Maersk partnership, so this page does not count those four as Cervo customers. A reader could look for the Wall Street Journal report that Altana's release links, or for terms in a later Altana funding or company filing.
- **Growth after funding.** The buyer names three co-founders. No source gives the headcount at the start beyond them, so the founding team of three is the best evidence for a small start. Dealroom reported 11 employees at the sale, after a US$5 million seed round. Cervo now belongs to Altana, which Dealroom describes as a roughly 300-person company valued at US$1 billion in a 2024 Series C round.
- **Trust signals on the site.** The home page shows 14 company logos; four of these companies have case studies with named people, and the other ten appear only as logos. It states that "Industry leaders have saved over 40,000 hours with Cervo" and "$40,000+ saved per operator" without a method, and shows SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001 and "Monitored by Vanta" badges without a linked report.
- **Competition.** Dealroom wrote that UPS, FedEx, DHL and Flexport have all put AI into their own brokerage operations, and Altana bought Cervo to offer a full customs workflow. On this site, HeyShip (classification and landed cost for Brazilian importers) and 5U AI (AI workers for European freight forwarders) sell related trade paperwork automation.
- **Dependence on model providers.** No downloaded source names the language-model provider behind Cervo's document reading. The EMD Customs case study says the brokerage had tried ChatGPT and Gemini for tariff classification and stopped partly because of security concerns about sensitive data in general-purpose AI tools, so the general models are both a possible supplier and a possible substitute.

## Sources

1. Altana, 21 July 2026: Altana Acquires Cervo AI to Deliver End-to-End Agentic AI Platform for Customs Brokerage — https://altana.ai/resources/altana-acquires-cervo-ai (grade A). Read in full. The buyer's own release. Source for the sale, its date, the product description and the three co-founders with their titles. It gives no price.
2. Dealroom News, 21 July 2026: Altana buys AI startup Cervo in first acquisition, deal could top $100M — https://dealroom.co/news/140201-altana-buys-ai-startup-cervo-in-first-acquisition-deal-could-top-100m/ (grade D). Read in full (downloaded 8 November 2026). Dealroom's own summary of a press report that it links on MSN. Source for the reported deal value, the founding year, the 11 employees, the seed round and the customs-volume figures.
3. Pulse 2.0, 22 July 2026: Altana Acquires Cervo AI To Create End-To-End Customs Brokerage Platform — https://pulse2.com/altana-acquires-cervo-ai-to-create-end-to-end-customs-brokerage-platform/ (grade B). Read in full. Independent trade press. Source for "Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed" and for the founding team joining Altana.
4. Cervo AI home page, read 8 November 2026 — https://usecervo.com/ (grade C). Read in full, including the FAQ. Source for the product, the acquisition banner, the customer quotes, the logos, the badges and the company's own claims.
5. Cervo AI customer stories page, read 8 November 2026 — https://usecervo.com/customers (grade C). Read in full. Lists four case studies dated April 2026.
6. Cervo AI case study: How PG CHB uses Cervo AI to reduce entry processing time by 70% — https://usecervo.com/case-studies/pg-customs-brokers (grade C). Read in full. Source for the time per entry and the workflow.
7. Cervo AI case study: EMD Customs cuts entry processing time by 75% with Cervo AI — https://usecervo.com/case-studies/emd-customs (grade C). Read in full. Source for the three-person brokerage, the earlier use of ChatGPT and Gemini and the product features.
8. Cervo AI pricing page, read 8 November 2026 — https://usecervo.com/pricing (grade C). Read in full. One custom plan with no published price.
9. VCBacked company profile: Cervo AI — https://www.vcbacked.co/company/cervo-ai (grade D). Read in full. A funding directory, data last updated 29 July 2025. Source for the seed round date and the three investors.
10. Internet Archive copy of usecervo.com, 26 August 2024 — https://web.archive.org/web/20240826235706/http://usecervo.com/ (grade C). Read in full, including the page code. The first archived copy: a placeholder page built with Next.js.
11. Internet Archive copy of usecervo.com, 22 March 2025 — https://web.archive.org/web/20250322210836/https://usecervo.com/ (grade C). Read in full, including the page code. Shows the earlier general data-entry product and the Clerk, PostHog and Sentry code.
12. Database of failed startups, local export — /method/#dead (grade C). Local export. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors.

Contact: aiolum@livyden.com. Run Cervo AI? Send corrections or a verified figure to aiolum@livyden.com (subject: Correction: Cervo AI).