How AI Is Finally Tackling America's Unclaimed Duty Crisis

Forbes

5 days ago

In international trade, one of the best-kept secrets is also the most expensive: over $10 billion in refundable tariffs goes unclaimed each year. Despite being legally entitled to recover these funds, companies fail to file duty drawback claims on an estimated 78% to 85% of eligible transactions.
Enter a new wave of AI-powered trade management companies that have collectively raised tens of millions in venture capital over the past eighteen months. The latest of these is Caspian, which just emerged from stealth with $5.4 million in seed funding led by Primary Venture Partners. The San Francisco-based company, founded by ex-Flexport engineers Justin Sherlock and Matt Ebeweber, focuses specifically on duty drawback—the process of reclaiming tariffs paid on imported goods that are later re-exported.
Caspian founders: Justin Sherlock and Matt Ebeweber
This follows a surge of venture-backed players in the broader supply chain space, suggesting investors see significant opportunity across the trade technology spectrum as tariffs dominate international headlines. London-based iCustoms.AI bagged $2.2 million in seed funding last year from Fuel Ventures and Plug and Play Ventures for its AI compliance platform. And Altana raised a splashy $200 million Series C to address global value chains.
Market Forces Fueling Growth
The numbers tell a compelling story about both opportunity and market growth. Estimates vary, but the global trade management software market is expected to exceed $2.2B by 2032, growing at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of roughly 8.4%.
Despite this expanding market, the duty drawback opportunity remains largely untapped. In 2017, the total amount claimed was about $838 million, but by 2023, this figure had increased to an estimated $3.9 billion. This trajectory suggests businesses are becoming more aware of drawback opportunities, but it also underscores how much money has historically been left on the table.
The venture-backed players entering this space face an interesting dynamic: They're not just competing for market share in an existing software category, but essentially creating demand for a service many businesses don't realize they need.
"After working for over a decade in trade with brands and manufacturers struggling to navigate this overly complex process, we thought there had to be a better solution for businesses to manage tariff exposure,' said Justin Sherlock, founder and CEO of Caspian. 'Over 90% of eligible businesses are leaving cash on the table because claiming duty refunds is so painful. We built Caspian to leverage AI alongside our expert staff to make organizations' trade data usable, making claims more compliant and refunds easier to recover.'
Trade Technology Market Positioning
The Hidden Cost of Complexity
Billions of dollars are left unclaimed every year. Many businesses pay duties on imports without realizing they could get that money back. The reasons are telling: duty drawback involves navigating a maze of regulations, matching import and export records across years of transactions, and filing paperwork with U.S. Customs and Border Protection — a process that can take months using traditional methods.
This complexity has created a peculiar market dynamic. Most existing solutions focus on compliance and risk management, rather than financial recovery.
The established competitive landscape includes several categories of players. Software-centric companies like OCR Inc.'s EASE Enterprise Suite offer web-based automation with ERP integration, while full-service providers like J.M. Rodgers Co. (JMR) claim high recovery rates of up to 99% with their CBP-approved proprietary software. Logistics giants like DHL Global Forwarding and Flexport offer drawback services as part of broader trade solutions, while specialized consultants like TecEx and Tradewin focus on specific segments or geographic markets.
Alliance Drawback Services and Livingston International represent the traditional consulting model, offering expertise-heavy approaches that promise high recovery rates but require significant manual oversight. Meanwhile, e-commerce focused players like Swap Commerce target high-volume returns using SKU and inventory tracking.
The New Guard: AI-First Approaches to Trade Tech
The current funding environment reflects broader investor enthusiasm for AI applications in traditionally manual sectors. AI startups received fifty-three percent of all global venture capital dollars invested in the first half of 2025, with trade technology representing a small but growing slice.
The competitive dynamics are revealing. New entrants are targeting different stages of the trade process: Caspian focuses on financial recovery, iCustoms.AI on compliance, and others like Revenir AI on workflow automation. Together, they may challenge incumbents like OCR and J.M. Rodgers by offering faster, more streamlined alternatives to legacy systems..
This division of labor suggests the market is large enough to support multiple approaches, but also highlights the complexity of trade operations that no single solution can fully address.
The duty drawback space has long been dominated by traditional customs brokers and consulting firms who charge hefty fees—often 30 to 40 percent of recovered duties—for manual, labor-intensive processes. Established players like Tradewin and larger customs brokerage firms have built businesses around this complexity, but their methods haven't fundamentally changed in decades.
On the technology side, Oracle can help businesses check the eligibility of imports for duty drawback and help automate key processes such as document gathering, regulatory compliance, and filing duty drawback requests through its Global Trade Management suite. Similarly, OCR's duty drawback software solution allows for easy access to the data needed to recover duty paid to CBP, while MIC-CUST revolutionizes duty refund management by facilitating refunds of up to ninety-nine percent on duties, taxes, and fees.
However, even established players like Flexport are doubling down on AI integration. In February 2025, the logistics giant rolled out a suite of new AI-powered tools, signaling that incumbents aren't ceding ground to startups without a fight. This creates an interesting dynamic where venture-backed specialists must compete not just with traditional brokers like DHL Global Forwarding and Alliance Drawback Services, but with well-funded incumbents rapidly deploying their own AI solutions.
What sets the newcomers apart is their AI-first approach and, in e.g. Caspian's case, its rare distinction as both a licensed customs broker and CBP-approved technology vendor—a regulatory combination that allows it to file claims directly with customs authorities, similar to established players like J.M. Rodgers Co. but with modern automation capabilities.
The Trump Factor: Tariffs as Business Reality
The stakes have never been higher. President Trump's renewed focus on tariffs has dramatically increased the amounts businesses pay in duties, making recovery programs more valuable than ever. New reciprocal tariffs that went into effect earlier this year — with new deals rolling in — add an additional 10 percent ad valorem duty on most imported goods, creating fresh opportunities for drawback claims.
This environment has forced businesses to reconsider their trade strategies.
'Centralizing this data and executing these cost savings so quickly is a game-changer for our margins and inventory planning,' said Jim Franz, President, North America at UltiMaker, a Netherlands-based manufacturer of 3D printers that uses Caspian.
The AI Promise and Its Limits
There is a broader trend toward using artificial intelligence to automate traditionally manual financial processes, while companies like iCustoms.AI focus on preventing compliance issues through better data classification and documentation, companies like Caspian lean towards AI. Both approaches promise significant time savings—Caspian claims to submit duty drawback claims in days rather than months, while iCustoms.AI automates customs clearance procedures that traditionally require extensive manual review.
This tension between automation and expertise reflects a broader challenge facing the entire venture-backed trade tech sector. Yet they must navigate the same fundamental challenge that has allowed established players like J.M. Rodgers Co. and TecEx to maintain high recovery rates: trade regulations that require nuanced interpretation.
The competitive benchmarks are daunting. Traditional providers like J.M. Rodgers and Alliance Drawback Services claim recovery rates of up to 99% of duties, with the ability to file retroactive claims up to three to five years prior. For venture-backed startups to succeed, they must not only match these recovery rates but do so while offering superior user experience and faster processing times.
Market Dynamics and Consolidation Pressure
The influx of venture capital into trade technology suggests investors believe the market is ripe for disruption. Primary Venture Partners' Emily Man frames it as creating an entirely new software vertical: "tariff management."
However, the market faces natural consolidation pressures. Large enterprises often prefer working with established customs brokers who handle their full trade compliance needs rather than point solutions. Meanwhile, smaller businesses that could benefit most from automated duty drawback often lack the trade volume to justify the cost of any solution.
This creates a challenging middle market opportunity that challenger companies must navigate carefully. Success will likely depend on demonstrating clear ROI while building the regulatory credibility that only comes with time and successful claim filings.
The Regulatory Wild Card
Perhaps the biggest unknown is how U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will adapt to increased automation in duty drawback filing. CBP completed sixty-seven audits in May that identified one hundred thirty-nine million dollars in duties and fees owed to the U.S. government, suggesting heightened scrutiny of all trade-related filings.
While CBP has approved select technology vendors, the agency's capacity to handle a surge in automated claims remains untested. If AI-powered platforms dramatically increase filing volumes, it could create processing bottlenecks or trigger additional regulatory requirements.
'Long-term, we see ourselves as a strategic partner in modernizing U.S. trade infrastructure,' Sherlock says. 'We're helping businesses take advantage of export incentives to grow GDP and improve profitability for US-based inventory and manufacturing.'
Looking Forward: Promise and Peril
The emergence of AI-powered duty drawback solutions reflects a broader transformation in how businesses approach international trade costs. As tariffs become a more permanent feature of the economic landscape, tools that help companies optimize their trade expenses will likely see continued demand.
Yet the industry faces fundamental questions about scalability, regulatory adaptation, and whether technology can truly solve problems rooted in policy complexity. Success will depend not just on technical capability, but on building trust with both customers and regulators in a field where mistakes can be costly.
The billions of dollars in annual unclaimed duties represents a massive opportunity—but it also reflects the entrenched complexity that has kept money on the table for decades. Whether AI can finally unlock this value remains one of the most intriguing tests of automation's promise in financial services.
For businesses struggling with rising tariff costs, the answer can't come soon enough. But in a field where regulatory compliance and financial recovery intersect, the path forward may prove more challenging than the technology alone suggests.