Insider Brief
- Burnt raised $3.8M in seed funding led by Penny Jar Capital, with participation from Scribble Ventures, Formation VC, and prominent angels, to build an AI-powered operating system that automates repetitive workflows in the global food supply chain.
- Its agentic platform integrates with legacy ERP systems, capturing and processing orders from emails, voicemails, and spreadsheets in seconds instead of hours, already handling over $10M in monthly orders for major distributors like La Tua Pasta.
- Founded by fourth- and third-generation food industry entrepreneurs, Burnt aims to bring “supply chain superintelligence” to procurement, finance, and compliance — modernizing a $9T sector still reliant on outdated systems.
PRESS RELEASE — Burnt announced a $3.8M seed funding to build an AI-powered OS to automate repetitive operational work slowing down the global food supply chain, an integral part of the $9 trillion food industry. Burnt’s agentic platform automates monotonous workflows stuck in ERPS, working with existing legacy systems to accelerate them, not replace them. The round is led by Penny Jar Capital, with participation from Scribble Ventures, Formation VC, and prominent angel investors, including Dan Scheinman, food industry leaders and AI influencers.
“The food supply chain runs on relationships, hustle, and a thousand moving parts — but behind every order is a team buried in emails, messages, voicemails, and spreadsheets, manually trying to keep everything on track,” said Joseph (“JJ”) Jacob, Co-founder and CEO, Burnt. “I’ve experienced this first-hand, from working the shrimp factory floor to managing global procurement, and when I couldn’t find a solution, I began building one. With Burnt, we are creating supply chain superintelligence to eliminate the repetitive, invisible work and give time back to the people keeping the food industry moving.”
The food supply chain is held back by legacy systems designed to securely store data in silos, not intelligently adapt to the dynamic, complex interconnectivity — and manual inputs — of the food industry. Beginning with an operational agent, Burnt captures orders from any source, such as emails, voicemails, and spreadsheets, and automatically inputs the data into existing ERP systems faster and more accurately. A sales order takes about 10 minutes to process, with hundreds coming in every minute — meaning an entire day is spent processing orders. With Burnt, the time per order takes seconds, essentially giving back a full workday to focus on customers. Burnt plans to expand with additional agents for teams across procurement, distribution, accounting, finance, and compliance.
Burnt is processing over $10 million worth of orders monthly for initial customers including top food distributors across meat, seafood and specialty foods, such as La Tua Pasta. Nicholas Hanson, Managing Director, La Tua Pasta, said, “After using other softwares that start-ups built, I saw why Burnt is different — they actually get the weird, wacky nuances of our world. They were relentless in making my team happy, and that’s why I backed them in their seed round. Now I can’t even imagine what life was like before Burnt.”
As graduates of Y Combinator’s S25 batch, Burnt’s founders are generational supply chain entrepreneurs with extensive expertise in every stage of the food supply chain — from farm to table. JJ (Joseph Jacob), Co-Founder and CEO, is a fourth-generation food supply chain entrepreneur, starting his career in a shrimp factory, before leading global procurement for one of the largest shrimp importers in America, to working at a Benchmark backed B2B marketplace for restaurants and suppliers called Rekki, building at the intersection of legacy food supply chain and venture-backed technology companies. Rhea Karimpanal, Co-Founder and CPO, is a third-generation food supply chain entrepreneur with roots in India’s spice trade, and experience building products and services for legacy industries like hospitality and travel with venture-backed companies like Fora Travel. Chandru Shanmugasundaram, Co-Founder and CTO, is a third-generation industry entrepreneur who started his technology career by building an in-house ERP for his father’s printing press company before holding key engineering roles with India’s top unicorn tech companies.
“JJ brings unmatched expertise to the food industry. He has lived every layer of it — from the factory floor to managing hundreds of millions in procurement — and that kind of knowledge can’t be picked up quickly by others. It comes only from years of firsthand exposure to the way this industry truly operates,” said Bryant Barr, Founding Partner, Penny Jar Capital. “That depth, combined with his relentless drive and refusal to accept the status quo, is why we bet on JJ and his team — and why we believe they’ll win.”
“What impresses me most about the Burnt team is they are not just outsiders looking to disrupt a historic industry with radical technology. Instead, they’ve lived this life and know all the nuances in workflows and where the real opportunity is to help,” said Dan Scheinman, angel investor. “That insider experience is exactly the kind of founder-market fit we look for.”
“Many founders are attacking obvious industries with agentic capabilities, but there are others that don’t get the same limelight where the opportunity set is equally massive. Food distribution is a $300 billion industry running on legacy systems that were installed some 25 years ago. It effectively skipped the SaaS generation. Any modern piece of software that breaks through will be in large part to a team’s customer sensibilities,” said Solly Garber, Formation. “JJ spent his entire life in this industry and it shows in the way the Burnt team architected and brought the product to market. We are seeing really encouraging early signs and think Burnt can one day be the central nervous system of the food distribution.”
“While the food supply chain relies on technology, there are still so many headaches and low efficiency workflows that result in massive opportunity costs,” said Elizabeth Weil, Founder & GP at Scribble Ventures. “Given their deep industry knowledge, the Burnt founders are the right team to build an AI solution that gives time back to the people who keep the food industry moving.”
About Burnt
Burnt is building superintelligence to strengthen the global supply chain. The company’s agentic platform will automate workflows stuck in legacy ERP systems — starting with the food supply chain. Founding members Joseph Jacob, Rhea Karimpanal and Chandru Shanmugasundaram, are generational supply chain entrepreneurs with extensive expertise from sales, to procurement and operations. For a demo and more information, please visit https://www.getburnt.ai/.
Press Contact
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Featured image: Credit: Burnt
