The Mark Cuban-backed cheese company used AI to find an unlikely place to cut costs: the cardboard boxes that carry vegan wheels.
Austin-based Rebel Cheese maintains a lean team. But after the busy holiday season, CEO Kirsten Maitland discovered that the company’s delivery partners had overcharged her by an estimated $250,000.
Embarrassed by the sheer cost of these fees, she deployed AI and devised an agent that audits invoices and compares the company’s contracts with delivery partners line by line, pointing out discrepancies. Agents also process photos of boxes to look for bulges as small as one-eighth of an inch that can cause huge over-delivery charges.
Overall, the agent saved Maitland $400,000. This is a huge amount for a young company. shark tank Star Mark Cuban invested $750,000 and the valuation is estimated to reach $20 million by the end of the year.
“As a small business owner, I feel that AI can bring similar benefits to larger businesses,” Maitland said. luck. “It levels the playing field and gives us similar opportunities.”
Today’s AI models are advancing at a breakneck pace. While more Americans shudder at the idea of an AI-driven job apocalypse, others are diving headfirst into the technology and leveraging it to improve efficiency and answer complex questions.
How AI can save you $40,000 per month
Rebel Cheese’s AI agent works as follows: Maitland has her executive assistant upload weekly invoices to the AI tool, along with a version of the company’s contract that specifies rates based on shipping specifications such as zone, weight, and dimensions. The agent then flags any discrepancies and provides evidence and data that Maitland uses to dispute charges and secure credit from shipping partners.
Agents can also inspect boxes for physical anomalies that could cause price hikes, while auditing package dimensions and weight. Once Rebel Cheese flags a discrepancy, you can make changes before shipping your order and avoid costly surcharges.
Maitland said savings have fallen below $40,000 in recent months, which she believes is because delivery partners are becoming more aware that her AI tools are catching overcharges.
AI agents are different from typical large-scale language models that people use to draft emails or come up with recipes. Agents are autonomous AIs that are aware of their environment and can complete tasks without humans. In the case of Rebel Cheese, humans are still involved, with both Maitland and his assistants interacting with agents to produce results.
Why other companies are (or aren’t) deploying AI agents
Some companies are now deploying agents at scale to work alongside human employees to automate mechanical tasks, analyze data, and improve productivity. McKinsey’s 2025 State of AI report found that 62% of companies are actively deploying or plan to deploy AI agents in their workflows. Some business leaders, like Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, predict that in 10 years there will be 100 AI agents for every human employee.
But despite a growing number of executives being bullish on the technology, a recent survey by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that a majority of 6,000 corporate executives in the US, UK, Germany, and Australia see little impact from AI on how their companies operate.
And even though AI agents are becoming increasingly sophisticated and in some cases even structuring entire workflows, only 6% of businesses fully trust AI agents to handle their business processes, according to one study. harvard business review Report.
Still, for small businesses like Maitland that implement this technology, the rewards are great and the expertise their agents provide is invaluable.
“Even if we hired two full-time people, I don’t think they would be able to find all of these discrepancies because there would be too much data,” she says. “Honestly, this is unmanageable, and that’s where AI is really powerful.”
