Smart Technology & AI Bringing fleet reality into reach: How AI assistant Stevie supports shipping’s daily decisions By Matthew Talbot, co-CEO of Complexio
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hipping is a multigenerational industry where decades of accumulated operational knowledge is at once its greatest strength and weakness. That knowledge is among the hardest things in business to capture in structured data systems. Complexio is the intelligence layer for enterprise AI, founded as a joint venture between leading tanker operator Hafnia and deep tech specialists Símbolo. It captures the operational knowledge that lives in the unstructured communications between employees, drawing systems, people, conversations, and relationships into a single connected picture of how a business is operating — from PMS and voyage management to crewing tools and inboxes. Within weeks of being pointed at a company’s data, it has learnt that company’s own vocabulary — the vessels by name, the trades by route, the people by role. Think of it as institutional memory that does not retire. Earlier this year we introduced Stevie, the conversational layer that sits on top of the Complexio platform. With Stevie, teams receive proactive briefings on what has changed overnight and query them as they would a colleague, putting tacit operational knowledge within reach anywhere inside your organisation. Stevie draws from Complexio’s Event Knowledge Graph, a living model the
platform builds itself by reading emails, reports, and procedures, and fusing them with the structured systems where shipping’s daily reality is recorded: voyage management, PMS, crewing, finance, and on-board sensors. There’s no schema to design, no taxonomy to negotiate, no consultants interviewing operators. The graph learns your vessels, charterers, ports, contracts, and cargoes, together with the events that link them. That is what lets Stevie answer the questions a colleague would, not the questions one tool can at a time, with each answer traceable to the communications and records it drew on. Stevie is now in production at several leading shipping organisations. Because it runs alongside their existing systems, customers move quickly from pilot to active use. Inside Marfin Management, CEO Alex Albertini calls Stevie “part of our daily operating rhythm.” For a crewing department, that rhythm could start with a question Stevie answers in seconds: which seafarers are due for change next month, on
which vessels, and what flights, certificates, and visas are outstanding. The same exercise, done by piecing together emails and recorded events, can absorb most of a working day. Speed is one part of the story. Dry bulk operator TST Group offers another. Chairman Massimo Giovannini calls it “capturing the tacit knowledge that experienced people apply every day.” For an accounts payable team, that could mean Stevie reading the tone of incoming invoice emails to flag which need attention today, applying the judgment experienced staff would otherwise carry alone. The knowledge stays with the company even as the people who carried it move on. In shipping, intelligence compounds. Every voyage, fixture, and port call adds to a picture that grows richer with use. Companies adopting this now hold a context advantage that takes late starters years to close. Shipping’s enduring strength has always been the knowledge it carries forward. Complexio makes sure that continues. l
Issue 121 May/June 2026
Ship Management International
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