I’ve been following AI disruption stories for a while now, but nothing quite prepared me for what happened on February 12th. A company with a market cap of roughly $6 million — yes, single-digit millions — managed to trigger a sell-off that vaporized billions from some of the biggest names in trucking and logistics. The culprit? [SemiCab AI](https://semicab.com/), a freight optimization platform built by [Algorhythm Holdings](https://algoholdings.com/) (NASDAQ: RIME).
Here’s the backstory that makes this even wilder. Algorhythm used to be The Singing Machine Company — literally a karaoke equipment maker. They [sold that business for $4.5 million](https://www.stocktitan.net/news/RIME/algorhythm-completes-4-5-million-sale-of-singing-machine-karaoke-uhguk2048ygi.html) in 2025 and pivoted entirely into AI-driven logistics. That pivot led to SemiCab, and what SemiCab claims to do is genuinely staggering: it lets a single freight operator handle over 2,000 loads per year, compared to the industry standard of about 500. That’s a 300% to 400% increase in capacity without adding a single person to the payroll. On top of that, SemiCab says it cuts empty trucking miles — trucks driving around with nothing in them — by more than 70%.
The market reaction was immediate and brutal. [As CNBC reported](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/12/trucking-and-logistics-stocks-tumble-on-release-of-ai-freight-scaling-tool.html), C.H. Robinson dropped 14.5%, RXO cratered 20.5%, Expeditors International fell 13.2%, and the Russell 3000 Trucking Index lost 6.6% in a single session. [Bloomberg called it](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-12/logistics-stocks-plunge-as-latest-victim-in-ai-disruption-trade) the latest victim of the AI disruption trade. Financial media quickly dubbed the whole episode the [“Great Freight Shakeout”](https://markets.financialcontent.com/stocks/article/marketminute-2026-2-13-the-great-freight-shakeout-how-a-micro-caps-ai-vision-wiped-billions-from-trucking-giants), and honestly, the name fits.
What’s really spooking the industry is the concept of disintermediation. Traditional freight brokers like C.H. Robinson and Landstar have built their businesses on massive networks of human agents connecting shippers with carriers. SemiCab’s AI engine does that matching automatically — continuously learning from network activity, adjusting routing, pooling loads, and allocating capacity in real time. If the platform works at scale the way Algorhythm claims, the “human moat” that brokers have relied on for decades could be in serious trouble.
Now, should we pump the brakes a little? Probably. Algorhythm is still a micro-cap company with Q3 revenues of [$1.7 million](https://www.stocktitan.net/news/RIME/algorhythm-holdings-q3-revenues-surge-1273-from-about-zero-to-1-7-6a0g32mgdgvb.html), and the jump from live customer deployments to industry-wide disruption is enormous. [TechRadar pointed out](https://www.techradar.com/pro/tens-of-billions-of-dollars-wiped-out-from-household-name-brands-as-obscure-penny-stock-karaoke-vendor-turned-ai-platform-debuts-game-changing-platform) the irony of a former penny-stock karaoke vendor shaking up a $23 billion sector, and that skepticism is fair. But the numbers from their live deployments are hard to ignore, and they’re already gaining traction with Fortune 500 companies in India and building out U.S. operations.
Whether SemiCab ultimately delivers on all its promises or not, the February 12th sell-off proved something important: even the most traditional, physical-world industries aren’t safe from AI anxiety. One small company, one white paper, one set of impressive benchmarks — and suddenly the entire freight brokerage model is being questioned. That’s the world we live in now.
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