In air cargo, margins are tight, timelines tighter, and tech adoption, well, let’s just say floppy disks had a longer prime. But Aircon, out of Flower Mound, Texas, just dropped a heavy lift into this $270B global airfreight market with a $5M seed round co-led by Blumberg Capital and Las Olas VC, bringing their total raised to $8M. If that doesn’t get your radar pinging, you might still be quoting freight with a fax machine.
Founded in 2021, Chris Condon, Irl Wakefield, and Dennis Oleksyuk are building something most in the industry didn’t realize they were allowed to want: automation that works, AI that earns its keep, and a platform, Captain Cargo, that actually scales with the hustle, not against it. Chris brings three decades of freight forwarding scars and stripes, including a long run at Expeditors and two CEO seats before betting the house on Aircon. Irl’s been elbows-deep in air cargo ops since the Nokia 3310 era. And Dennis? He left DataRobot’s engineering bench to turn machine learning into machine doing for freight pros drowning in manual workflows.
Captain Cargo doesn’t just automate quotes, it weaponizes them. Laura handles quoting. Rocky books it. Rosie cleans up the chaos. One agent, half the manpower, 1,500 quotes a day, and 40% more wins. That’s not disruption. That’s a freight-forwarding cheat code.
Ask Jeremy Lovelady at F2F International. His team posted 2.5x revenue growth in 90 days after switching to Captain Cargo. Not “future state.” Not “pilot program.” That’s right now. That’s airfreight done with intel, not instinct.
Blumberg Capital’s Jacob Katz has joined the board, adding firepower to a team already backed by Underscore VC, Schematic Ventures, and ASC VC. The new capital is gassed up for global gateway expansion, more AI infrastructure, and a headcount boost in engineering and ops. And if you’re in this space and think you’re safe ignoring this? You’re either selling pallet space on Craigslist or praying to Lufthansa for a rate.
The big takeaway here isn’t that Aircon raised. It’s that this industry finally has a contender that understands it. Air freight consolidation should’ve gone digital a decade ago. Aircon didn’t wait for permission, they engineered the future into existence.
So here’s the real cargo in this drop: If you’re a freight forwarder still living in Outlook folders and PDF attachments, you’re not just behind, you’re invisible. Aircon’s not building for the giants. They’re building for the indies, the hustlers, the midmarket backbone that keeps the whole game flying. And that’s the smartest freight move we’ve seen in a long time.
Chris Condon, Irl Wakefield, Dennis Oleksyuk, congrats on the raise. Keep shipping the future. The rest of the industry is about to find out just how heavy analog gets when AI’s cleared for takeoff.
