Caspian's Pivot: Building a Full-Stack Operating System for Global Trade

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – June 24, 2026 – In a move that signals a significant strategic pivot, AI trade platform Caspian has acquired advisory firm Trade-IQ and launched a suite of new products, transforming itself from a niche specialist in duty recovery into an ambitious, full-lifecycle trade operating system. The deal, which brings trade compliance veteran and Trade-IQ founder Shannon Bryant into Caspian’s executive ranks, is more than a simple expansion. It represents a calculated play to consolidate a fragmented market and redefine how importers, particularly in the underserved mid-market, manage the multi-billion-dollar complexities of customs duties.

This is a classic case of operational innovation. While competitors focus on discrete pieces of the trade puzzle, Caspian is building a unified platform designed to manage import duties from pre-shipment planning to post-entry recovery. By integrating human expertise with a powerful AI engine, the company is betting it can solve a problem that has cost American businesses billions: the opacity and complexity of global trade compliance.

From Niche Recovery to a Unified Platform

Caspian entered the market in 2024 with a sharp, focused mission: automate the recovery of duty drawback, a refund mechanism established in 1789 that the vast majority of eligible companies never claim. The numbers are staggering. Caspian estimates that over $100 billion in tariff refunds are currently recoverable across the U.S. economy, with roughly 95 percent of eligible companies never filing. The reason is simple: the process has historically been a manual, paper-intensive nightmare, accessible only to large enterprises with the resources to retain expensive trade counsel.

Caspian automated that process, and its initial success was rapid. In just 15 months operating under its own customs broker license, the company filed for over $40 million in refunds. But as CEO and Co-Founder Justin Sherlock stated, this was always just the beginning. "Duty recovery was always the entry point to a larger problem: importers lack a single, trusted system for managing duty across its entire lifecycle," he explained.

The acquisition and new product launches are the manifestation of that broader strategy. The market is currently served by a patchwork of solutions—traditional customs brokers who file entries but rarely optimize duty spend, and large-scale Global Trade Management (GTM) software suites that can be cumbersome and costly. Caspian is positioning itself as a third way: an integrated, AI-native platform that addresses the entire duty lifecycle: recover, audit, optimize, and advise.

The Technology Powering the Shift

At the heart of Caspian's expanded offering are two new products, Trade Audit and a Tariff Calculator, both built on a sophisticated AI engine that seeks to bring clarity to an notoriously opaque field. This isn't just about creating a lookup table for tariffs; it's about modeling the entire regulatory landscape.

Nicolas de Ory, a Software Engineer at Caspian, described the underlying complexity. "Tariff calculator is not a lookup table. It is a graph: thousands of rules, exclusions, and effective dates that change constantly and interact in ways that are easy to get wrong," he said. "We modeled that graph, then put agentic AI on top... That is the hard problem, and it is the foundation under everything we ship."

The Tariff Calculator promises to deliver a complete, customs-style duty determination—including base rates, trade remedies, and special provisions—in under a second. Critically, it provides a fully auditable trail, citing the governing authority for each calculation. This moves the process from an opaque estimate to a verifiable science, a crucial innovation for companies modeling landed costs or brokers preparing entries.

Trade Audit applies this same engine retroactively and proactively across a company's entire customs footprint. By connecting to a company's federal customs account and integrating with over 80 other systems, it can scan years of historical entries to flag misclassifications, valuation errors, and unclaimed trade agreement preferences. It also screens incoming shipments before filing, allowing importers to prevent overpayments before they happen. This creates a continuous, single view of duty exposure—a powerful tool for financial control and supply chain resilience that few mid-market companies have ever had.

The Human-AI Synergy: Expertise as a Force Multiplier

While the technology is impressive, the most telling aspect of Caspian's strategy is the acquisition of Trade-IQ and the integration of its founder, Shannon Bryant. In an industry where trust and nuanced interpretation are paramount, the move underscores a belief that pure automation is not enough. Bryant, who previously led trade compliance at Harley-Davidson, brings over 15 years of deep domain expertise.

Her firm, Trade-IQ, was founded on a similar principle to Caspian: serving the underserved. "I built Trade-IQ because mid-market importers were underserved by an industry that reserved real trade advisory for the largest enterprises," Bryant commented. Her decision to join Caspian highlights the symbiotic relationship between expertise and technology. "Caspian built the technology I always wished I had: a platform that audits entries, classifies products, and quantifies exposure at a scale no advisory team could match by hand. I joined to bring that to every importer, not just the Fortune 500."

This fusion of human and machine intelligence is the operational core of the new Caspian. The platform’s AI can process millions of documents and identify potential issues at an inhuman scale, but every finding is validated by licensed customs brokers before any action is taken. Bryant, as the new Vice President of Trade Advisory, will lead this practice, ensuring that the platform’s powerful outputs are translated into sound, compliant strategies. As CEO Justin Sherlock put it, her expertise, "paired with our platform, makes Caspian a full-service partner."

This human-in-the-loop model not only enhances accuracy but also builds the trust necessary to convince companies to hand over a critical business function. It positions Caspian not merely as a software vendor, but as a strategic partner capable of navigating the grey areas of trade law where algorithms alone might falter. By embedding deep industry knowledge directly into its operational and product development cycles, Caspian is creating a formidable competitive moat.