Exclusive: CBP taps Altana's AI for trade enforcement
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U.S. Customs and Border Protection is expanding its work with supply chain management firm Altana, signing a two-year federal contract to use its AI platform to monitor global supply chains, the company told Axios exclusively.
The big picture: The partnership is part of the administration's focus on federal AI procurement — a central pillar of President Trump's AI action plan.
- The move comes as private firms and federal agencies alike are looking for ways to navigate the supply-chain uncertainty stemming from Trump's unpredictable approach to trade policy.
Driving the news: CBP has inked a formal two-year contract with Altana to test its AI platform, per the company.
- CBP staff will use it for real-time trade enforcement, forced labor and counternarcotics risk detection, and customs clearance modernization.
- The initial phase of the pilot program will screen "hundreds of millions of transaction line items of current and historical audit data," per a press release.
Altana will provide AI-enabled compliance screening that it touts as "critical" for enforcing Section 232 national security tariffs on steel, aluminum and other products.
- That means evaluating "agentic AI systems trained on the Altana product network to predict and flag potential issues" like incorrect tariff codes or a misdeclared country of origin, the release notes.
- CBP will also use Altana's platform to try to expedite customs clearance, with importers able to pre-verify their supply chains, and to establish a small package screening enforcement program.
What they're saying: "By integrating the Altana product network into CBP's operational platform, we are allowing CBP to evaluate Altana's enabling of continuous compliance monitoring of the supply chain networks upstream of the U.S. border," said Altana CEO Evan Smith.
Flashback: In 2023, CBP awarded a contract to Altana to give its staff access to its product Atlas to identify and block goods linked to forced labor.
