Noi Mahoney
4 min read
The global supply chain is undergoing a significant transformation, marked by tariffs, rising trade restrictions and evolving technologies.
An emerging method for trade stakeholders to improve efficiency and respond to almost any disruption is through combining AI computer vision and digital twin technologies, Erez Agmoni, co-founder and general partner at Interwoven Ventures, said.
A digital twin is a virtual model that can replicate a supply chain. AI computer vision is a field of artificial intelligence that enables computers to “see” and interpret images and videos, mimicking human vision.
“AI, digital twins, computer vision, I would say the intersection between those three is quite amazing,” Agmoni told FreightWaves in an interview. “Let me find new routes, new supply chain sources, new ideas. The more data you put into that, you’ll be able to create new scenarios on how to solve those types of things. So one day the scenario is a war, another day is tariffs, another day is Covid.”
New York-based Interwoven Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm investing in technologies such as robotics and AI to transform the healthcare, manufacturing, logistics and transportation sectors.
Before co-founding Interwoven Ventures, Agmoni’s career included being the global head of innovation at shipping giant Maersk, where he spearheaded using technologies to improve efficiency across the company’s supply chain ecosystem.
Agmoni said his time at Maersk taught him the importance of first identifying what type of problems that need be solved.
“You have to do all this by saying, “what is my problem?” You’re not just bringing a digital twin for the sake of saying, ‘let me create a digital twin here,” Agmoni said. “You build it to solve this and these problems. You have to declare what your problems are first, so then you can actually measure them.”
The digital twin market in the U.S. is experiencing expanding growth, projected to increase from $3 billion in 2023 to $36 billion by 2028, according to MarketsandMarkets.
The AI computer vision market could see even more explosive growth, with an increase from $23.42 billion in 2025 to $63.48 billion by 2030, according to research from MarketsandMarkets
One of the first projects Agmoni used AI computer vision technology to solve at Maersk was how to efficiently unload containers at a cross-dock operation.
“They came to me and said, “hey, we want to be able to unload those containers, manually, unload them in a faster fashion,” Agmoni said. “I asked how long it takes you to unload this container? The first supervisor jumped in and said six hours. The other supervisor came and said it’s 11 hours. The third guy came and said nine hours. I said, “guys, you don’t even know how long it takes you.”
