Steph Curry’s VC firm just backed an AI startup that wants to fix food supply chains (techcrunch.com)

Burnt, a Y Combinator startup, raised $3.8 million in seed funding led by PennyJar Capital (Steph Curry’s VC) to deploy AI agents that automate back-office tasks in perishable food supply chains. The company’s first agent, Ozai, extracts and processes orders arriving via email, phone, WhatsApp, voicemail, text and even fax, then inputs them into legacy ERPs — reportedly handling up to 80% of current workflows. Launched in January, Burnt says it now processes over $10 million in monthly orders across seafood, specialty goods and packaged food distributors, has six-figure revenue, and is onboarding large customers including a multi-billion-dollar U.K. conglomerate. The significance for AI/ML and enterprise software is practical: instead of forcing costly ERP replacements and multi-year rollouts that small-to-mid distributors resist, Burnt layers AI agents on top of existing systems to automate manual, low-margin work. That approach addresses decades of failed digitization attempts in a trillion-dollar U.S. food market and could unlock productivity, reduce errors, and free sales teams for higher-value tasks. Technical implications include multi-channel natural language and document understanding, robust integration with aging ERPs, and workflow orchestration — all built by founders with deep industry experience, which helps drive adoption in a skeptical sector.