It’s become all too easy. When someone needs an answer on the go, where do they turn to? You already know the answer. ChatGPT! Need to translate an email? ChatGPT? Do some cursory research for an article? ChatGPT. Want to come up with a travel itinerary? ChatGPT. But if there’s a robot on hand to answer any query, then why is global trade infrastructure stuck in the 20th century? Freight still runs on PDFs, insider or tribal knowledge, and manual coordination. There are long waiting lines, physical signatures are needed, and god forbid if someone gets sick. Goods are tangled up in out-of-date practices and formats that need to go.
Albert Lie, the co-founder and CTO and Forward Labs, knows this. He was born into a family of truckers and knows first hand the frustrations that have handicapped the industry forever. But he has dreamed up an intuitive, intelligent way to provide the same kind of automation that people expect in all other areas of their life. He is trying to foment change.
Forward Labs is part of Vercel’s AI Accelerator in Silicon Valley: an ultra-competitive program with an acceptance rate of just 2.5–3%, and is also a member of NVIDIA’s Inception program for AI startups.
Lie has extensive experience in running transformational businesses in Asia. He helped pioneer Southeast Asia’s first direct debit infrastructure in the Philippines. With little splash but a lot of elbow grease, he’s been working tirelessly to deliver little “aha” moments to underserved industries. Freight is now in his sights, as he creates autonomous agents that act, reason, and scale like a logistics brain that never sleeps.
Pioneering the First Leap: Direct Debit in the Philippines
Sometimes we forget that AI is a new phenomenon. It’s dominated the technology discourse for years, but 10 years ago, its application was largely theoretical, at least to the extent that it is being used today. At that time, as a founding engineer at Xendit, Lie played a pivotal role to make recurring payments happen smoothly by launching the Philippines’ first bank-integrated direct debit system.
Remember how it used to be. Businesses throughout the Philippines — from SaaS startups to neighborhood gyms — were stuck chasing payments with manual invoices and unreliable collection methods. The infrastructure Lie built changed that. Xendit worked with big banks like BPI and BDO to deploy its direct debit system, so that funds could be pulled straight from customer accounts, securely and automatically. This helped to make cash flow reliable.
“We started by building direct debit infrastructure for Grab, one of the largest regional players,” recalls Lie. “But we didn’t stop there. We scaled it so that every small and mid-size business in the Philippines — not just the tech giants — could benefit.”
Lie remembers seeing a sari-sari store owner in Quezon City use Xendit’s system to collect recurring payments from resellers for the first time. “That was the moment I knew it wasn’t just enterprise infra anymore — it was community infra,” he says.
By delivering a technology breakthrough, Xendit was able to help small and medium-sized enterprises grow, save money for business owners, as well as the time spent chasing down clients. “We gave them back hours of their lives every week,” says Lie. In the process of doing that, he learned a valuable lesson. Innovations in infrastructure can help small businesses function just as seamlessly as bigger ones.
Freight’s Impending ChatGPT Moment
At Forward Labs, Lie is now attempting to do the same thing with freight, a trillion-dollar industry plagued by inefficiencies. Freight doesn’t just need smarter software — it needs invisible, intelligent infrastructure, Lie insists. This is what Lie calls Freight’s ChatGPT moment, the creation of seamless systems that understand B2B logistics nuance and get things done.
By building AI agents that can automate operations and sales workflows for freight companies, Forward Labs aims to change the way business is done. These agents collect and structure data, surface the needle in the haystack, and eliminate repetitive administrative duties — so freight employees can focus more time selling, quoting, and growing accounts.
This is not easy. Lie and Forward Labs technicians are striving to create an infrastructure that can accommodate the needs of the thousands who can’t afford to customize it themselves.
By embedding AI in the flow of daily freight work — with no dashboards to configure, no APIs to hook up — Forward Labs aims to make autonomous workflows accessible to the 90 percent.
“Our AI is like a teammate,” says Lie. “It’s like having a logistics PhD by your side who’s too humble to talk and just wants to get to work.”
While some global players like Flexport have poured billions into digitizing their logistics stack, Lie believes the real transformation will come when smaller freight brokers — the ones situated in Davao, Busan, or the American Midwest — will have access to the same kind of infrastructure.
“It shouldn’t just be Flexport that can afford intelligent freight infrastructure,” says Lie. “Every forwarder should have access to AI tools that actually help them close business — not just manage it.”
One of the deeper challenges in B2B — especially in freight — is that there’s no equivalent of a search engine for businesses. Consumers have Google, Netflix, and TikTok feeding them recommendations. Businesses have inboxes, folders, and siloed teams.
“In freight, you can’t just dump recommendations like Netflix does,” Lie says. “The data’s fragmented, the workflows are messy, and most B2B intelligence is still trapped in someone’s head.”
That’s why Forward Labs is focused on operational AI — systems that don’t just search, but act with the precision and context of a logistics veteran.
Step by Step
Rome wasn’t built in a day, as they say, and neither is revolutionary infrastructure. But where other attempts also fail, either because of poorly formulated ideas or undisciplined teams, Lie has a proven record of achieving his goals. Whether it be fintech or logistics, the trajectory is clear, Lie wants to make the complex clear, and to use tools to improve the way things work.
While the rest of the world keeps looking for the next big thing, Lie is laser focused on something simpler: giving freight its long-overdue moment, because if everything else can be automated, so can freight. And when that happens at scale, it doesn’t just help the companies. “It lifts the productivity of global trade,” Lie explains. “It adds to freight GDP.”
“In the end, infrastructure isn’t just code or capital, it’s possibility,” says Lie. “And for the 90 percent, possibility is finally arriving.”