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As the short month of February wound down, all eyes were on the SCOTUS tariff news as companies scrambled to make sense of it and what the pivot means for them and their customers. But February wasn’t the only supply chain and logistics-related event that made headlines last month. Here are a few others.
Wall Street Gets Spooked by AI in Logistics
One of the bigger pieces of news last month happened when a firm that started out as an in -car karaoke maker announced to the world that its AI platform was going to change the freight management game. The announcement was widely reported. According to TechRadarPro, Algorhythm Holdings came through with a bold claim that its SemiCab platform was helping its customers scale their freight volumes by 300-400% without adding headcount.
This sparked a selloff across trucking logistics shares, the publication notes. “Investors reacted strongly to automation fears as [Algorhythm Holdings] surged in value,” it reports. “Market anxiety around AI disruption spread beyond trucking into healthcare and publishing.”
Some stocks went on to recover some of their losses and the broader market also calmed, but not before leaving the logistics space a bit rattled over the announcement. And if Algorhythm’s own statements are accurate, individual operators using its SemiCab platform can manage “more than 2,000 loads annually, compared to the traditional industry benchmark of approximately 500 loads per year per freight broker, demonstrating a 4X improvement in workforce productivity.”
“Historically, logistics has been constrained by human bandwidth,” said CEO Gary Atkinson, in a press release. “Every increase in volume requires more planners, more dispatchers, and more manual intervention. Our SemiCab platform breaks that dependency by embedding intelligence directly into the freight operating system.”
CNY Tightens Shipping Capacity
Chinese New Year fell on Feb. 17-23, once again putting pressure on global shipping networks as factories across mainland China slowed or shut down and cargo volumes surged ahead of the break. According to Maritime Gateway, some export-oriented plants began ramping down production between Feb. 7-10 as workers left early, compressing weeks of shipments into a shorter window.
The pre holiday cargo rush created congestion at key Chinese export gateways like Shanghai, Ningbo, Shenzhen, Nansha and Guangzhou, where terminals tightened gate in rules and prioritized containers with confirmed bookings. “In some ports, once a vessel’s allocation was met, additional boxes were rolled to later sailings, pushing up storage, trucking and handling costs for shippers,” Maritime Gateway adds.
“During this period, buyers pushed to get final orders out the door, compressing several weeks’ worth of shipments into a shorter window and overloading factory docks and local trucking capacity,” the publication adds, noting that some plants began partial restarts a week later, and that a “staggered restart” is fairly typical in the aftermath of this country-wide holiday period.
Mexico Becomes Top U.S. Export Market
Mexico has surpassed Canada as the leading destination for U.S. exports, WSJ reports, citing Commerce Department data. In 2025, the U.S. shipped $337.9 billion in goods to Mexico, representing 15.5% of total exports, compared with $336.5 billion (or 15.4%) sent to Canada.
The shift underscores Mexico’s growing role not just as a manufacturing base, but also as an important market for U.S. goods. Mexico’s Business Coordinating Council says this is the first time that more U.S. exports arrived in Mexico than Canada on an annual basis.
“Canada’s economy has struggled with the sharp trade-policy shift orchestrated by President Trump, and government ties between Ottawa and Washington have deteriorated,” WSJ says. “Canada initially imposed retaliatory tariffs against U.S. products, but later dropped most of them in an effort to reset negotiations.”
Helping to Strengthen Supply Chain Cybersecurity
Experts from Swansea University’s Computer Science Department are participating in an international initiative focused on the growing cybersecurity risks across the semiconductor supply chain. The project, Security Assurance of Semiconductor Manufacturing (SASM), is funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) through seed funding to support UK-U.S.-Germany collaborative research and innovation in semiconductor security.
SEMI's Semiconductor Manufacturing Cybersecurity Consortium (SMCC) has introduced the Standardized Semiconductor Cyber Assessment (SSCA), a new framework that helps suppliers demonstrate compliance through a single, standardized questionnaire.
“Cybersecurity in semiconductor manufacturing is essential to the resilience of global supply chains,” says Dr. Sridhar Adepu, one of the project’s co-investigators, in a press release. “Through this project, we aim to ensure that the resulting framework is practical, cost effective, and aligned with emerging global standards, supporting the UK, Europe, and international partners in addressing shared security challenges.”
