Taking the Leap From Cargo Owner to Tech

By Leslie Meredith

Former GE and Bechtel executive Adnan Rajput is embarking on a new chapter as CEO of a supply chain technology firm. He shares the experiences and ideas shaping his next move.

From Issue 2, 2026 of Breakbulk Magazine.

(5-minute read)

LM: You’ve spent more than 25 years in supply chain, most of that with GE and Bechtel. What drew you to technology?

AR: I was always into tech. My question, regardless of whatever I did, was always: How do I make things better for myself and others? My ex-boss (Erik Hallas) at GE told me once, “Adnan, if you make something easy for somebody, that person will always root for you, no matter where you go.” That stuck with me.

At the time, the industry as a whole was very dependent on Excel files, emails, all of that, and in many cases still is. When I moved from the U.S. to the Middle East with GE, I had an opportunity to rethink how we handled procurement and logistics. Something that was taking days could now be done in hours. Pick and pack, order management, inventory management, customer updates all got easier. Our costs went down dramatically. We reduced logistics costs significantly for the region. And the speed improved. We could see exactly what the backlog was, what the demand was, and what was left in the pipeline.

LM: What’s your take on AI and where it’s heading for supply chain?

AR: I see the models advancing very quickly. I think the growth accelerated during the pandemic when we knew AI adoption was coming, but maybe 10 to 15 years out. The pandemic became a catalyst. Looking at the future of supply chain, I think AI will bring more transparency and more competition to the market.

LM: What do you mean by more competition?

AR: Think about two freight forwarders. One is doing everything manually and the other is running on AI. The difference comes down to turnaround time. How long does it take to respond to a quotation request? We all work in different time zones. If I’m in the U.S. and you’re in China, by the time I wake up, your day has ended. But with AI, that’s all preprogrammed. While you’re sleeping, the AI is sending out the RFQ, collecting responses and running the calculations. When you come back online, everything’s ready. Your turnaround is dramatically faster.

Secondly, everything comes down to margin. Today, on the manual side, you’re guessing, is it 5%, 10%, 15%? You don’t have the data. With AI, you’d know upfront that last month you shipped the same thing to the same customer and charged X. You’re building consistency. Yes, there’s a cost to implementing an AI model, but the benefits are 10x that cost.

LM: How long will it take large companies like GE or Bechtel to integrate these systems?

AR: Based on my experience, these are organizations that take data security very seriously, and rightfully so. They want to make sure that whatever company they bring in to build the model, the data is protected. That due diligence takes time, but it’s the right approach. People don’t realize that data is the new oil.

Globally, there’s so much data out there, but people have no idea how to use it. You can have charts, you can have dashboards, but understanding the real value of data, knowing how to extract what actually benefits you, that’s something that very few are doing well in supply chain. You see it on the financial side, but not in logistics. The data is all siloed, and a lot of it isn’t clean. Garbage in, garbage out. Change will come, but it will take longer than people expect, and it comes down to the company’s vision, meaning where they see their logistics department in the next five or six years.

LM: How do you make the case to a decision maker who is hesitant?

AR: You put it in dollars and cents. Show them what they’re spending today in man hours and logistics spend and show them what changes with the new system. Yes, there’s a cost, but you can reallocate your resources. I give people a simple example: If you have five people in logistics doing tracking, documentation and administration, and you’re paying them an average of $100K each, that’s half a million dollars. If a system costs $200,000 a year but delivers 10x the return, you can move three of those people to higher-value work elsewhere in the organization.

With AI, you move from reactive to proactive. Instead of waiting a week to get the data you need, you get it with the click of a button. And you catch things you were never catching before like overpaying carriers or invoice errors. A lot of shippers are shipping so many loads a month that nobody goes back and checks. With the right tools, that data is visible immediately. It can tell you that you shipped this last month and paid X. Why are you paying two times more this month?

LM: Can you think of a specific project earlier in your career where these tools would have made a difference?

AR: Absolutely. Early in my career I worked on large projects in the Middle East where we were shipping hundreds of units for a single project. If we had these tools then, our procurement would have been simpler, our transportation more transparent and our raw materials sourcing better optimized.

Think about the typical process for a shipper. If I need to move something from A to B, I have a list of 10 providers. I send 10 emails. I get 20 responses asking for clarifications. Another 20 responses. By the time I’m done, I have 50 emails just for one shipment, and then I still have to sort through all of them for pricing, transit times, and terms. With the right tools, I would have put everything into the system and let the machine do it. The RFP goes out, responses come in, calculations run and nothing comes back to my inbox.

LM: What AI platforms do you use personally?

AR: I started with ChatGPT, just to test it. I liked it, then found Claude. After that, DeepSeek. I think it really comes down to your purpose. Are you using AI for coding? For general tasks and emails? For design? Personally, I mostly use Claude and DeepSeek.

LM: What’s your take on the quality of AI output?

AR: I think the human-in-the-loop is very important. I see a lot of people who just copy and paste AI output and send it out. That’s a mistake. At the end of the day, you as a human need to make sure the output makes sense. And so much of the result depends on your input. Like I said, garbage in, garbage out.

LM: You’re taking on a CEO role at a supply chain technology company. What are your goals for the first 90 days?

AR: First, it’s about making sure the technology stack is aligned with the real problems shippers and forwarders face every day. Because “supply chain optimization technology” can mean many things. Who are you serving? What problems are you solving first? How does it roll out across different markets? I want to make sure that roadmap is clear. That clarity is the foundation of everything else.

A shipper- and EPC-led session at Breakbulk Europe 2026 will explore how project decisions are really made in today’s market. What Actually Wins Work? How Shippers Decide, moderated by Luke King, founder and host of Project Cargo Professionals, will take place on the Breakbulk Live Stage on Thursday, June 18 from 1:30pm to 2:15pm.