TLDR: NBA star Stephen Curry’s venture capital firm, PennyJar Capital, has led a $3.8 million seed funding round for Burnt, an AI startup aiming to automate inefficient back-office operations in the food distribution industry. Burnt’s AI agent, Ozai, streamlines manual order entry from various communication channels, processing over $10 million in monthly orders and targeting the vast U.S. food market, which has historically resisted traditional software solutions.
In a significant move poised to disrupt the notoriously complex food supply chain industry, NBA superstar Stephen Curry’s venture capital firm, PennyJar Capital, has led a $3.8 million seed funding round for Burnt. The Y Combinator-backed startup is leveraging artificial intelligence to automate cumbersome back-office tasks, signaling a growing investor confidence in applying AI to overlooked, yet massive, markets.
The investment, announced on September 25, 2025, also saw participation from Scribble Ventures, Formation VC, and angel investors including Dan Scheinman. This capital injection comes as food distributors continue to grapple with antiquated workflows that have seen little meaningful change over decades. Orders, often arriving through a fragmented mix of emails, phone calls, WhatsApp messages, voicemails, texts, and even faxes, necessitate laborious manual data entry into outdated Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems—tools many operators begrudgingly refer to as a “necessary evil.”
Joseph Jacob, CEO of Burnt, brings a deeply personal understanding of these inefficiencies. Having grown up in a family with a seafood business dating back to his great-grandfather’s shrimp exports from India in the 1930s, Jacob spent years on factory floors managing hundreds of millions of pounds of seafood imports. “Everything was tracked on Excel sheets and a 20-year-old ERP system,” Jacob revealed to TechCrunch. “In a business with razor-thin margins, it’s nearly impossible to succeed without good supply chain management.”
Witnessing repeated failures of traditional software rollouts within his family’s operations, Jacob identified a critical need for a different approach. Instead of demanding distributors overhaul their existing infrastructure, Burnt introduces AI agents that seamlessly integrate with current systems. Their flagship AI agent, Ozai, is designed to automate order entry processes, capable of handling up to 80% of workflows that are currently mired in legacy systems.
The impact of Burnt’s solution is already evident. Since its launch in January, the startup has processed over $10 million in monthly orders, spanning seafood, specialty goods, and packaged food distributors. Notably, one of the UK’s largest food conglomerates, a multi-billion-dollar entity, is currently implementing Burnt’s system. While specific revenue figures were not disclosed by Jacob, the company is reportedly generating six-figure revenue and demonstrating consistent month-over-month growth.
The Burnt team’s profound industry knowledge distinguishes them from what Jacob terms “tech tourists.” Chief Product Officer Rhea Karimpanal, Jacob’s childhood friend and wife, hails from a restaurant family, while CTO Chandru Shanmugasundaram possesses a background in building software systems for restaurant applications. Jacob himself previously contributed to Rekki, a Benchmark-backed B2B marketplace connecting restaurants and suppliers.
PennyJar Capital’s investment philosophy prioritizes backing founders who are tackling overlooked industries where technological adoption has lagged. The firm recognized a substantial opportunity in the food distribution sector’s historical resistance to change. “Two decades of missed software adoption is a massive opportunity,” Jacob emphasized. “Investors who understand this know it can be huge if executed right.”
The U.S. food market, valued at over a trillion dollars, is predominantly served by small and mid-sized distributors. These businesses have often been disillusioned by expensive, protracted, and ultimately unsuccessful enterprise software implementations that forced radical operational changes. Burnt’s strategy—to augment existing processes rather than replace them—offers a compelling alternative. “Traditional software forced teams to rip out old processes and adopt new ones,” Jacob explained. “With AI, you don’t need to change the process; you just get the work done.”
While facing competition from industry behemoths like Oracle and SAP, these larger players have historically struggled to effectively cater to the fragmented food distribution market. Burnt’s specialized industry focus and strong founder-market fit provide a crucial advantage in building trust with skeptical operators who have grown wary of unfulfilled tech promises.
Also Read:
- Prosper AI Raises $5 Million to Revolutionize Healthcare Administration with Voice AI
- Emergent Secures $23 Million in Series A Funding to Advance AI-Powered Software Development
Burnt’s successful funding round underscores a broader trend: the increasing application of AI to less glamorous but economically vital industries that have resisted modernization through conventional software. With its deep industry roots and a pragmatic, integration-focused approach, Burnt is well-positioned to capture a significant share of the food distribution market. The ultimate measure of its success will be its ability to scale its innovative solution beyond early adopters to the thousands of mid-sized distributors who have long awaited effective technological transformation.
