Augment Enters $8T Distribution Market With Merlin Acquisition

Key Details Augment has acquired Merlin, an AI company specializing in wholesale distribution, marking the supply chain platform's entry into the $8 trillion U.S. distribution sector. The deal brings distribution veteran Alex Moazed on as president of wholesale distribution, alongside co-founders Nick Johnson and John Schumacher, formerly head of AI at Grainger. Why It Matters Freight brokers and carriers repeatedly asked Augment's CEO whether the platform could work with their largest customers - distributors. The acquisition directly addresses this customer demand and fills a critical gap in Augment's service offerings. The Distribution Challenge B2B distribution remains highly decentralized, with enterprise companies often running six different ERP systems simultaneously. Sales reps waste 30 minutes manually entering orders customers already typed out. Counter representatives face system crashes mid-quote, forcing restarts. Branch managers call suppliers biweekly just to track open orders. Augment's Advantage Generic AI tools struggle with unit conversions, customer-specific language, and complex workflows. Augment's Augie platform uses agentic AI following natural language procedures rather than custom code. Critically, the platform keeps customer data isolated and never trains shared models on proprietary distributor information - a major concern for an industry treating data as competitive advantage. Moazed, who previously ran the distribution sector's first dedicated venture capital fund evaluating over 700 supply chain tech companies, called the cultural and technological fit "already obvious."