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AI isn\u2019t all about automating core business functions at Fortune 500 companies. Small and medium-sized businesses can also use AI to optimize, economize, and in some cases compete more effectively against much larger rivals.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
An Austin, Texas-based vegan cheese-maker called Rebel Cheese used it to level the playing field against a larger supplier. Specifically, the company developed a small system of AI tools to help it claw back overcharges from a major shipping carrier.<\/p>\n
The company is perhaps best known for winning a $750,000 investment from Mark Cuban, money it used to grow Rebel Cheese into what it says is now a $20 million business. Cuban recently spoke about the company\u2019s crafty use of AI on stage at the Convergence AI event in Dallas.<\/p>\n
Rebel Cheese<\/a> ships tens of thousands of orders of perishable, handcrafted vegan cheese across the country. The holiday season is by far its busiest period. \u201cQ4 is all hands, heads down, get it out the door, make sure customers are happy,\u201d the company\u2019s cofounder, Kirsten Maitland, wrote in a recent blog post<\/a>. \u201cThere\u2019s no time to stop and analyze anything.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n After this past holiday season, Maitland took a look at the company\u2019s bank account, and something seemed off. Rebel Cheese had just had its best holiday season ever, yet the numbers didn\u2019t reflect it. So she started digging to find out where the profits were leaking away. She discovered that the company had paid $250,000 more for shipping than planned.<\/p>\n Hiring new employees to research and fix the problem wasn\u2019t in the cards. So Maitland turned to Anthropic\u2019s Claude. \u201cI handed it a year of invoices and a contract,\u201d she tells Fast Company <\/em>in an email exchange, \u201cand it found patterns I would have needed a forensic accountant to surface, which would have been time-consuming and expensive.\u201d<\/p>\n She says the carrier\u2019s shipping invoices run hundreds of pages per week, with fees layered inside fees. \u201cMost shippers don\u2019t have the time or tools to audit them,\u201d Maitland says. For the carrier, the complexity was not a bug but a feature, and a profitable one.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n