Steph Curry’s VC company has just supported AI startup that wants to fix food chains

Food supply chains are renowned dirty. Orders arrive through different channels, staff passes by hand, entering them into business software systems, and compliance is often dependent on computing sheets.

For decades, software suppliers have tried, with mixed success, to modernize the work flows behind the worldwide movement of perishable goods.

Now, a booty y Combinator called Burn believes that AI agents – software that can automatically handle work usually done by people – can succeed where traditional business software does not have in Random-Dollars US Food Purchase.

The company, which automates supply supply supplies with AI, has raised $ 3.8 million in funding of seeds led by Penny Jar Capital, the business business -supported business -supported business business with the NBA Curry star, with the participation including Dan Scheinman.

Burnt co -founder and CEO Joseph Jacob Grew up around food factories. He says his grandfather was the first to export shrimp from India to the US in the 1930s. Since then, every generation of his family has worked somewhere along the seafood supply chain, including agriculture, processing, export and import.

Jacob moved to India during his formative years and, after college, worked at the factory of a shrimp processor in a rural area. Experience introduced him to the complications of the food business and restaurants.

When he returned to the US and began managing large volumes of seafood imports, he noticed significant ineffectiveness.

“We ended up buying hundreds of millions of pounds of seafood, but everything was found on Excel leaves and a 20 -year ERP system,” Jacob told TechCrunch. “In a business with subtle rooms, it is almost impossible to achieve without good management of the supply chain. We went through multiple software implementations and two failures have failed.

Jacob’s experience is not isolated. Business sellers have long tried to sell distributors to large developments that have been transporting for years, cost millions and block small and medium -sized market players.

After two decades of adoption of lost software in the industry, Jacob believes Burnt’s approach for the layer of AI agents above existing systems instead of replacing them represents a huge opportunity.

“We are all talking to call their ERP an indispensable evil,” the chief executive said. “Traditional groups are forcing software to cut off the old processes and adopt new ones. With AI, you don’t have to change the process; just do the project.

Here’s how things tend to work today: Food distributors’ repetitions receive e -mail orders, phone calls, WhatsApp, voice messages, texts and even faxes. Each order must then be locked by hand. While critical, the process eats hours that could be spent on higher value work, such as gaining new customers or upgraded existing ones.

Burnt’s first agent Ozai automates and manages this order process. In fact, Jacob claims that he can handle up to 80% of the work flows currently stuck in old -fashioned systems.

Since the start of January, the start has processed more than $ 10 million on monthly seafood orders, special goods and packaged food distributors. One of the largest food groups in the United Kingdom, with billions of revenue, is currently implementing the Burnt system. The company is already generating six numbers revenue and is increasing a “fixed” month in a month, though Jacob declined to share accurate numbers.

While AI building for food supply chains may sound blunt, Jacob says this is the point. He argues that decades of failed technological rollouts have left skeptic operators for “technological tourists” without experience in the industry.

Its background, as well as that of its co -founders, has helped to burn to gain confidence in an area where relationships are important. Product manager Rhea karimpanal – Jacob’s childhood friend and now the woman – comes from a family who ran restaurants, while the CTO Chandru Shanmugasundaram Made software systems for restaurant applications.

Jacob worked at Rekki, a B2B market supported by a reference to restaurants and suppliers, where he saw firsthand how fragile the supply chain technology could be and how AI could transform it.

Still, winning investors were not simple. AI agents may be warm, but convincing VCs to support one for food distributors required a different step. Many had no belief in the market despite its size, he said.

There came Curry’s Penny Jar Capital. The dissertation of the company focuses on the founders who support the founders building on “overlook” industries where the adoption of technology is adopted.

“Two decades adopted by lost software is a huge opportunity. Investors who understand this know that it can be huge if it is executed properly,” Jacob said.