February 17, 2026
In Episode 9 of AI in Motion, host JP Morgenthal sits down with Brandon Wolfe, co-founder and managing partner of Jordan Partners, a private equity firm focused on AI-enabled services businesses within supply chain and logistics. Brandon’s unconventional path — from Appalachian math teacher to Teach for America to hedge funds (Tiger Management, Jet Capital) to founding his own PE firm — gives him a distinctly grounded perspective on capital markets and business fundamentals.
The conversation covers how Jordan Partners identifies and acquires bootstrapped software and services businesses operating at the intersection of AI and supply chain. Brandon unpacks his investment thesis: he’s not chasing moonshot startups but rather cash-flowing, mission-critical businesses where customer data gets “stuck” — creating durable competitive moats. He argues that stickiness built on compliance workflows and data repositories is far more defensible than transactional software, especially as AI lowers the barrier to replicating functionality.
The two also dig into the structural challenges of supply chain visibility — fragmented silos, the handoff problem between manufacturers, distributors, and independent truckers, cold chain integrity, and the economics of sensor-based tracking vs. AI-powered visual inventory (touching on RFID’s failed mass adoption vs. modern robotics like BJ’s “Telly”). Brandon’s bottom line: the most valuable businesses in this space combine killer service with strong software, own the customer’s data, and are the ones nobody wants to leave — not because the product is flashy, but because leaving is too painful.
