How is International Paper using AI?

Its 10-K doesn't say, which is what 10-Ks are like. International Paper's 2025 annual report mentions AI in five risk factors and nowhere else. They cover pricing pressure from new technologies including AI, AI-assisted cyber attacks, AI regulation, and failing to "identify, prioritize or implement digital and/or AI transformation initiatives". The top search result for this question is an analytics vendor's customer story about machine learning on International Paper's mill sensor data. It now redirects to another site and couldn't be opened for this piece, so we don't rely on it. The data work the 10-K does describe is its 80/20 performance system, which it calls "a disciplined, data-driven operating model focused on simplification, segmentation, resourcing and growth". Segmentation, deciding which products, customers and sites earn their place, is where the company reports money moving. It is also the analysis any useful AI in packaging would need first.

What the usual answer says

The top results are that vendor's story, in two formats, and AI profile pages that list uses such as quality, production optimisation and box design. The 10-K names none of these as AI uses. It lists them, in effect, as places where AI could matter.

What the 10-K says about AI

The 2025 10-K, filed on 27 February 2026, contains a risk factor headed with the transformation concern. It spells out the areas: "product design, materials sourcing, manufacturing, logistics, and customer delivery". Failing to adopt or scale these capabilities "could impair our ability to meet evolving customer expectations". It could also leave the company behind competitors on "innovation, speed to market, manufacturing efficiency, and service performance".

Other mentions cover pricing pressure from "the introduction of new products, technologies and equipment, including the use of artificial intelligence". Regulation "could make it more difficult to use AI tools". And cyber attacks may become "more difficult to detect, contain, and mitigate". The 2024 10-K had a similar set, with the transformation risk framed around "point-of-sale through to manufacture and delivery to customers". The Q2 2026 10-Q doesn't mention AI.

What it says about data

The strategy section is where data appears as practice. "At International Paper, we follow the IP 80/20 performance system." The approach, in the company's words, is "a disciplined, data-driven operating model" built on simplification, segmentation, resourcing and growth. The company says it is used to "guide investments and align resources to win with customers, while reducing complexity and cost across the Company".

The results are reported in money. In its second regional business, the company launched 80/20 in 2025 with "approximately $200 million of run-rate cost-out actions" in 2025. The 10-K counts acquisition savings in that figure as well as 80/20 actions. Accelerated depreciation of $958 million in 2025 was "associated with asset rationalization decisions", related to "mill strategic actions and other 80/20 actions".

Why segmentation comes before AI

The 10-K doesn't link 80/20 to AI; the link is ours. Segmentation needs one cost basis across the order, production and finance systems, so that a product's margin means the same thing wherever it is read. When the systems disagree, the segmentation sorts the wrong things into the wrong boxes.

Errors of that kind rarely show in a summary report. From Quarri's own work with a lumber and millwork manufacturer: inter-branch transfers booked at zero revenue but full cost produced a negative margin that didn't exist. A segmentation run on those numbers would have flagged the wrong products as losers.

AI raises the stakes. A model trained to price, schedule or recommend on misallocated margins learns the misallocation. The 10-K's list of transformation areas, from design to delivery, is a sensible list of places to apply AI. Each one depends on the segmentation data being sound first.

What to watch

The planned separation of its regional businesses may produce new filings with their own account of technology. An AI initiative named inside the 80/20 system, with a result attached, would be the first sign of AI in the strategy rather than the risk factors.

When it doesn't apply

Filings describe what is material and disclosed, and mill-level machine learning, like that the vendor describes, sits below that level. Businesses that already run profitability by customer and product on sound allocations can move to AI sooner.

Quarri for pulp, paper and packaging is built around how a fibre operation runs, from furnish to converted order.

Quarri is an AI-native data platform for the timber supply chain. It connects buying, production, sales and inventory for forest management, sawmill, wood products and pulp, paper and packaging operators.