The FreightCaviar Podcast: Berlin Tech Meets American Freight With Levity.AI Co-Founders

Today, we sat with CEO Gero Keil and CTO Thilo Huellmann of Levity.ai. Levity is a software company based in Berlin, Germany, specializing in AI-driven email automation solutions for freight. We discussed the impact of their technology on the freight industry, the future of AI, and the differences in business culture between Europe and the USA.

Founding Journey

We started off our conversation by exploring the path that led Gero and Thilo to work together. The two met while attending business school in Koblenz and bonded over their entrepreneurial skills. After finishing school, their paths diverged, but both continued to dabble in building websites and kept in touch. In 2018, they reunited to work on Levity.ai.

Cultural Differences in Business

Gero talked about the differences between business cultures in America and Germany: "I think the mindset in Europe is that slow and steady wins the race."

Generational Perspectives in Germany

Thilo and Gero also touched on the subject of generational differences in Germany: "You have a lot of people in their 30s and 40s who are really conservative, also with their personal finances. They're not investing in the stock market, things like that. And the reason is that three generations back, we had crazy hyperinflation, and people lost all their money, right? So they're trying to keep it together, and they're really risk-averse."

Explaining Levity.ai’s Technology

Thilo explained Levity.ai’s technology, "Our software identifies what is coming in and then also gets you the right information out no matter what the email looks like, and it puts you into the format that you need so that you can do something with it. For example, you can write a quote, so you can enter it into your TMS."

The Future of AI According to Thilo

We also spoke about the future of AI. In Thilo’s opinion, he doesn’t "believe that we will just have this mega model AI thing that just does everything, where you log into your laptop one day and say, ‘Do my job’, and then it asks you five questions about what your job is and it just does it. I don't think we're moving anywhere close to that."

Levity’s Vision for AI

When asked about the future of Levity involving AI, Gero told us that they see it as a tool to further improve the experience with technology that is already out in the world. One of the ways they could use it, he says, is to "allow freight brokers to connect their inboxes, and instead of needing to prescribe how their workflows should look like, they could, for example, just read through historic data in their inboxes and then make suggestions."

Learn More
Find out how the Levity.AI email solution works by reading this in-depth blog here.

And watch the full interview below: