This AI Startup Wants to Be the Kayak.com of Moving [CNET]

Moving ranks as one of the most stressful life events — and the average American moves 11 times, so it’s a taxing event most of us experience many times over. 

Beyond the stress of packing and unpacking and starting at new workplaces and schools and finding new doctors and veterinarians and friends, there’s also the nerve-racking process of simply finding a mover. But just as AI is looking to help us live healthier and tell our life stories, it may also help take some of the pain out of moving. Or at least that’s what AI startup WeMove hopes is possible.

The status quo leaves a lot to be desired.

For starters, if you enter your information on a moving website, you may actually have given your details to a lead provider, which sells that information to multiple companies, which then inundate you with phone calls, texts and emails.

And then there’s the inventory capture process. This is when you and a potential moving company go through your home, room by room, and talk about all the furniture and boxes that will need to go on the truck. Typically, it’s done via a phone or video call — but it’s not an exact science. You have to estimate the number of boxes you’ll pack in each room.

Plus, movers’ calculations are done in cubic feet. And if you, like me, don’t totally understand what 500 cubic feet means, you could be in for a rude awakening when a truck arrives on moving day and it doesn’t have enough space for your stuff.

“Very, very, very few times do moves go according to the quote that was assessed at the actual day of inventory capture,” said WeMove founder Travis Benoit. “What we wanted to do was streamline that entire process, very similar to what you would think of when you’re thinking about planning a trip.”

In fact, Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based WeMove aspires to be the Kayak.com of moving. By that, it means it wants you to be able to book your move online, much like you would a vacation.

WeMove launched a consumer marketplace in October 2023, which allows you to do inventory capture, get a quote, book a move and be assigned a carrier without ever having to interact with a human salesperson.

The startup has built image recognition software, which allows you to take photos or videos of your home to catalog inventory. The software identifies all the items in those rooms. You then receive an itemized breakdown of inventory by room, which you can edit as needed.

Its AI model was trained on 20,000 household items, including bulky items like pinball machines and grand pianos.

“The most difficult part of training an AI model is not just the image recognition component that we’re using, but training it to be 98% accurate when it comes to the actual sizing,” Benoit said.

WeMove also uses a GPT, or a custom-built AI chatbot based on OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot technology, as part of this process.

WeMove recently released a software platform and an API for moving carriers to capture inventory with the same technology. The startup also plans to build an AI-driven load board for carriers, which is what moving companies use to find jobs.

“For example, a long-haul carrier is going across the country and they pick up your load from, let’s say, Los Angeles, and they’re on their way to Miami and the system knows that they’ve dropped off 500 cubic feet in Texas,” Benoit said. “We can automatically tell that carrier, ‘Well, we know that you’re going to Miami and we have 500 cubic feet sitting here in Texas,’ so your truck never has to go partially empty.”

WeMove also plans to build a moving-specific customer relationship management, or CRM, platform.

“Most players are operating on what’s called legacy software. And when I say legacy software, I’m not talking 2015. I’m talking 1997 to 2001,” Benoit said.

WeMove raised a preseed round from Mucker Capital and is planning to raise a seed round in the near future.

This is one of a series of short profiles of AI startups, to help you get a handle on the landscape of artificial intelligence activity going on. For more on AI, see our AI Atlas hub, which includes product reviews, news, tips and explainers.

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