Moving is one of the most stressful events in life. The average American moves 11 times, so it’s something most people will experience multiple times.
Aside from the stress of packing and unpacking, starting a new job or school, and finding new doctors, vets, and friends, there’s also the nerve-wracking process of finding movers. But just as AI is trying to help us live healthier and tell our life stories, it might help make moving some of the pain less painful. At least, AI startup WeMove hopes it can.
There are many areas in the current situation that need improvement.
First, when you enter your information into a moving-related website, you’re actually giving your details to a lead provider who can then sell it to multiple companies and in turn inundate you with calls, texts, and emails.
And then there’s the inventory process, where you and the movers go through your house, room by room, and discuss all the furniture and boxes that need to be loaded onto the truck. It’s usually done over the phone or video call, but it’s not an exact science. You’ll need to estimate how many boxes to pack in each room.
Plus, movers calculate in cubic feet, and if you’re like me and don’t fully understand what 500 cubic feet means, you could be in for a bad surprise on moving day when the truck arrives and you don’t have enough space to load your belongings.
“It’s very rare that a move actually goes according to the estimate assessed on the day of the inventory,” WeMove founder Travis Benoit said. “What we wanted to do is streamline that entire process in a similar way that you might think about when you’re planning a trip.”
In fact, Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based WeMove aims to be the Kayak.com of moving, meaning it wants to enable you to book a move online in the same way you book a vacation.
WeMove launched a consumer marketplace in October 2023, allowing people to understand inventory, get quotes, book moves, and assign movers without interacting with a human salesperson.
The startup has developed image recognition software that allows you to take photos and videos of your home to catalog your inventory. The software identifies every item in the room. You’re then given a breakdown of your inventory by room, which you can edit as needed.
The company’s AI model was trained on 20,000 household items, including bulky items like pinball machines and grand pianos.
“The hardest part about training the AI model is not just the image recognition component that we’re using, but training it to be 98 percent accurate with respect to actual size,” Benoit said.
As part of this process, WeMove also uses GPT, a custom-built AI chatbot based on OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot technology.
WeMove recently released a software platform and API that uses the same technology to help movers keep track of their inventory, and the startup also plans to build an AI-driven package bulletin board that movers can use to search for work.
“Let’s say the system knows that a long-haul carrier is traveling across the country, picking up a load in Los Angeles, and then dropping off 500 cubic feet in Texas on the way to Miami,” Benoit says. “We can automatically tell that carrier, ‘I know you’re going to Miami, and you’ve got 500 cubic feet in Texas,’ so the truck never goes empty.”
WeMove also plans to build a customer relationship management (CRM) platform focused on moving.
“Most players are running what we call legacy software. And when I say legacy software, I don’t mean 2015, I mean 1997 to 2001,” Benoit said.
WeMove has raised a pre-seed round from Mucker Capital and plans to raise a seed round in the near future.
This is one in a series of short AI startup profiles to help you understand the current state of the ongoing artificial intelligence activity. For more information on AI, check out our AI Atlas hub, which features product reviews, news, tips, and explanations.
