CartonCloud at Manifest 2026: AI, Flexibility, + Scaling 3PLs

Vincent Fletcher and I recently sat down with Kevin Lawton on The New Warehouse Podcast live from the expo floor at Manifest Las Vegas 2026 to share our thoughts on what’s actually changing in logistics right now — from operational pressure and shifting customer demands to the practical impact of AI.

Coming off the back of a year defined by volatility and uncertainty, our conversation focused on how mid-market logistics operators are adapting — and what that means for the systems they rely on every day.

We discussed:

• What we’re seeing across 600+ 3PLs globally after a challenging 2025.
• How CartonCloud is evolving to support more complex, multi-channel operations.
• Where AI is delivering real value today — both internally for efficiency, and as a practical tool for solving customer problems.
• The growing shift toward more flexible, custom solutions — including what customers are now building themselves with AI.

TL;DR: In this Q&A session with Kevin Lawton, CartonCloud CEO Shaun Hagen, and CartonCloud Co-founder & CPO Vincent Fletcher, and break down what 2025 taught logistics operators; how CartonCloud is evolving to support more complex operations; and where AI is driving real efficiency — from internal workflows to customer-led solutions.

Q: What’s the latest with CartonCloud since last year?

Shaun Hagen: It’s been a really exciting year for us, AI has probably been the main theme from a technology perspective. We’ve seen continuing incremental improvements in things like robotics; but for us it’s been really exciting to find ways to productively put [AI] into the product as well.

Q: What trends did you see in 2025 and where are we now in 2026?

Shaun Hagen: It was a really interesting year… we had a lot of uncertainty and volatility in 2025 with tariffs, making it very hard to plan ahead with confidence. We saw a continuation of labour shortages and rising costs which put a lot of pressure on operators who had to be able to do more with the same or less. Resilience and flexibility became a buzzword. It wasn’t who guessed what was going to happen; it was who could respond quickly to what would happen, as well as work really closely with their customers.

On the other side, the e-commerce boom continued to see tailwinds. We saw order volumes up 24% year on year. Peak was up 33% year on year. In the background, you had AI coming in and potentially changing everything. It’s been really interesting to see where AI is actually delivering value, where it’s supporting, taking over, and where it’s just not quite there. We saw that drive expectations to have connected data systems with an AI strategy.

Q: How are you helping customers navigate these challenges of increased order volumes or AI?

Vincent Fletcher:  Historically, CartonCloud was predominantly used by B2B companies… like food and beverage going into bars, restaurants, cafes with bulky, palletised orders. Now, we’ve seen our customers storing palletised food or solar panels bring on a customer that needs them to do 600 orders a day direct-to-consumer. It requires totally different workflows. We’ve been doing heaps of work on more storefront integrations, pick-to-tote flows, and a completely revised packing process in our mobile and desktop app.

Q: How are you embracing or working with AI?

Vincent Fletcher:  We’re using AI very heavily internally — across engineering, support, and even content. Things that used to be too hard to automate — like drafting release blogs, knowledge base articles, or support tickets — can now be done quickly with AI. We’re also using it internally to configure workflows. Historically, that meant clicking through settings and dropdowns — now our team can generate the same outcome with a few prompts. Being able to assist [customers] with AI to configure those workflows is a huge advantage. It accelerates onboarding, because they don’t have to learn the absolute depths of the settings to get it tailored really well.

Shaun Hagen: Where we are seeing real value is when you can connect multiple systems into AI agents — that’s where you start to get genuine workforce enablement, because you can look across the entire operation. For us, making sure we have a modern, AI-forward architecture is just as important as any individual AI feature in the product. That’s what allows us to become part of our customers’ broader AI strategy — so they can choose how they want to use AI in their business, and we can work with that seamlessly.

Vincent Fletcher: One of the things we’re starting to see — and we’re doing this ourselves — is how much AI has democratized and accelerated the ability to build API-based add-ons. If you already have software with a strong API, you can now extend it for your specific use case using tools like Lovable or Replit — and build something in a matter of days. We’re seeing that become a real path for customers solving highly specific problems — things that don’t necessarily make sense for us to build as a full product feature. Instead, they can create something tailored to their workflow that plugs straight into our APIs and solves a core business issue.

Q: What do you think about building vs customers building their own solutions?

Vincent Fletcher: For us, if we’re going to build something into the product, it needs to be relevant to a meaningful portion of our customers — typically at least 40%. From there, you can expand that to a broader group by adding flexibility and options around it, so customers can tailor it to their own workflows. Software like ours will become more of a backbone, but you’ll start to see [customers build auxiliary tools or add-ons using Lovable or other AI coding agents.

Listen to the full conversation + explore what’s next for CartonCloud in 2026

Thanks to Kevin at The New Warehouse Podcast for the great conversation as always!

To learn more about what’s coming down the pipeline for CartonCloud in 2026, check out our blog on what 2025 really taught logistics operators + how to prepare for 2026 where Vincent and I discuss our upcoming product roadmap.