Atlanta-based logistics startup Stord announced Wednesday it has acquired AMS Fulfillment, a third-party logistics provider that processes more than 10 million orders annually for beauty, wellness, and direct-to-consumer brands. The deal marks Stord's largest acquisition to date and its twelfth overall, adding more than 1 million square feet of warehouse space across hubs in the Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, and Philadelphia metro areas.
Stord provides a fulfillment network along with commerce software, AI, and applied robotics, and the company framed the AMS deal as adding over 10 million orders annually while it continues investing in its network, applied AI, and robotics, according to PR Newswire. AMS Fulfillment, for its part, has offered order management, warehouse and inventory management, reverse logistics, and value-added fulfillment services primarily to beauty, cosmetics, apparel, footwear, and accessories companies.
AMS Fulfillment was founded in Valencia, California, in 2002 by Jay Catlin and his father David Catlin under the name Advantage Media Services, originally handling packaged media assembly before expanding into broader e-commerce logistics, according to AMS Fulfillment. The company grew from 15 employees at launch to more than 300 across bi-coastal facilities before the buyout, and it earned Certified B Corporation status in December 2017 with an overall impact score 22% higher than the qualification threshold, per the same account.
A Decade-Long Buying Spree
Stord's acquisition of AMS is the latest in a string of deals that have reshaped the company's footprint over the past two-plus years. In July 2024, Stord acquired Pitney Bowes' e-commerce fulfillment operations, including a 640,000-square-foot facility in Hebron, Kentucky, just weeks before Pitney Bowes placed the remainder of its Global Ecommerce business into Chapter 11 bankruptcy liquidation, Supply Chain Dive reported. In May 2025, Stord acquired UPS subsidiary Ware2Go, adding 21 fulfillment centers and 2.5 million square feet of warehouse space while locking in a multi-year shipping partnership with UPS, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
Stord followed that with the January 2026 acquisition of Shipwire, adding 12 fulfillment centers and expanding into European and UK markets while picking up technology connecting to more than 200 e-commerce storefronts and ERP systems, according to Digital Commerce 360. Stord's own network expansion strategy, per the PR Newswire release, now includes Shipwire, Ware2Go, and the Pitney Bowes e-commerce fulfillment business, and the company's global network spans more than 100 locations.
Betting Big on Robotics and AI
The AMS facilities bring automated put walls and sortation systems that give Stord additional automated capacity to deploy robotics and AI, the company said. Stord launched Stord Labs, its dedicated robotics deployment arm and data foundry, in May 2026, the same month it closed a $250 million Series F round at a $3 billion valuation. That round brought Stord's total venture capital raised since 2015 to over $775 million, backed by investors including Strike Capital, Founders Fund, Kleiner Perkins, Franklin Templeton, and Baillie Gifford, according to FreightWaves.
Stord has also secured a $400 million credit facility led by Citi this month, and the company says it has grown tenfold over the past four years while now processing more than $15 billion in annual gross merchandise value for more than 1,000 brands. Stord reaches roughly one in four U.S. households and says its network generates more than 8 billion data points each year.
Leadership Weighs In
Sean Henry, Stord's CEO and co-founder, said the company has spent a decade building a fulfillment network and end-to-end commerce platform for brands, and that AMS accelerates that scale while bringing discerning brands onto its platform. Henry founded Stord in Atlanta in 2015 through Georgia Tech's CREATE-X startup incubator alongside Jacob Boudreau, leaving school at 19 to pursue the venture, according to Georgia Tech's College of Engineering. Henry has consistently described Stord's acquisition strategy as an attempt to aggregate fulfillment volume across independent merchants so they can match the unit economics and delivery speeds of Amazon Prime, a rationale Entrepreneur has detailed in its coverage of the company.
Greg Morello, chief executive officer of AMS Fulfillment, said AMS customers will retain what made the company successful while gaining the backing of Stord's scale and technology. Stord said AMS customers will benefit from its full network and parcel program, AI, and vertically integrated technology, and that AMS has provided white-glove commerce services to retailers and brands for more than 20 years. The company added that it is entering peak shipping season with more capabilities, intelligence, and momentum than at any prior point in its history.
Part of a Broader Industry Shift
Stord's buying spree reflects a wider pattern among third-party logistics providers, which have accelerated mergers, acquisitions, and warehouse automation initiatives across 2025 and 2026 to offset rising parcel carrier rates and combat persistent labor shortages in major industrial hubs, according to PYMNTS.com. Stord separately announced a $40 million multi-year investment in its Hebron, Kentucky hub in December 2025, expanding the facility to more than 1 million square feet and creating 500 local jobs, per Digital Commerce 360.
Stord has described itself as the physical intelligence layer for independent commerce, arguing that modern fulfillment after checkout has become as important to consumer trust as the product itself. With AMS now folded into its network, the company is positioning itself to enter the holiday shipping crunch with a larger physical footprint, deeper automation capacity, and millions of additional annual orders running through its platform.
