Burns & Levinson represented Syrup Tech, the AI-powered predictive software platform for inventory excellence in commerce, in its $6.3 million seed funding round led by Gradient Ventures, Google's AI-focused venture fund. The round also included Flybridge Capital, Firstminute Capital, Rackhouse Ventures, as well as Angel investors including (former) executives at Adidas, Bonobos, Salesforce, ASOS, ThredUp, Casper, Zalando, and Stripe. The Burns & Levinson team was led by partner Robert Chow with assistance from associate Michael Andreasen. "We have been working with Syrup Tech since their founding in 2020 and are excited to be part of this next phase in the company's growth," said Chow. "Inventory planning is a critical issue for retailers and manufacturers, and this seed funding round will enable Syrup Tech to take its innovative solutions to the next level. We look forward to supporting their ongoing success as they expand their team and service offerings and explore new growth opportunities."

Knowing how much and which kind of inventory your brand needs involves a complex web of data that companies often keep up with via spreadsheets or legacy systems that don't provide a full picture of the business. Syrup Tech, now armed with $6.3 million in new funding, is feeding all that data, like transactions, marketing and inventory, and combining it with other data, like social media trends and even the weather, to spit out predictive inventory recommendations using artificial intelligence and machine learning. This way, merchandisers and planners have better information on what they need and can reduce some of the waste. "I was at McKinsey previously, and was shocked to see merchandisers spend hours on spreadsheets," James Theuerkauf, co-founder and CEO of Syrup Tech, told TechCrunch. "My thought was to let the AI do the number-crunching and let the merchandiser make the creative decisions using the AI as support."