German startup Conlio, which provides an AI-powered financial platform for road freight companies, has raised €6.4 million in a funding round. The company will use the investment to expand its business across Europe and help freight forwarders automate their financial operations.
The round was led by Piton Capital, with participation from Haufe Group Ventures and two logistics groups: WaVe-X (WALTER GROUP) and F-LOG Ventures, the investment arm of FIEGE. Existing investors System.One, Puzzle Ventures, Booom Ventures and Yellow also took part in the round.
Dr. Claudio Consul, Founder and CEO of Conlio, says: “Freight is one of the world’s largest industries, and digitalisation has transformed large parts of it. But the industry is full of edge cases and decisions that depend on context, which has made true end-to-end automation difficult with traditional software. AI changes that. At sennder, I saw first-hand how much operational complexity still sits behind freight documentation, settlement and payments. With Conlio, we turn that complexity into verified data and automated financial workflows. Our long-term ambition is to change how money moves across supply chains, and verified freight documents are where this begins.”
Michael Macklin, Investor at Piton Capital, adds:”Road freight forwarding handles huge volumes of transactions dependent on manual checks, and many people have been stumped on how to fix this. What we liked most about Conlio and Claudio was that they know the problem inside out, from the perspective of their customers, while also having the technologist’s insight on how it can be done differently. The product is already embedded in customers’ daily operations and we believe that can build a platform with powerful network effects as more participants join and more transactions flow through it.”
Founded in Berlin in 2023 by Dr Claudio Consul, Conlio uses AI to read complex freight documents, turn them into accurate data and automate related financial tasks.
The company says Europe’s road freight market is worth around €430 billion, but freight forwarders often work with low profit margins. Conlio’s platform can automate more than 90% of freight document checks. This helps companies reduce manual work, avoid overpayments and send invoices faster.
According to Conlio, its platform can increase a freight forwarder’s earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) by up to 30%. For a company with €100 million in annual revenue, this could mean an additional EBIT impact of more than €1 million per year.
