AI Startup Anchr Raises $5.8M to Automate Food Supply Chain

The company aims to bring AI-powered automation to the fragmented food distribution industry.

Published on Mar. 10, 2026

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Anchr Inc., an AI-focused startup, has raised $5.8 million in seed funding to develop its platform that automates tasks in the food supply chain. The company was founded by Tzar Taraporvala and Smayan Mehr, who saw the need to modernize the industry's reliance on manual processes and outdated systems. Anchr's AI-powered tools aim to optimize inventory management, purchasing decisions, and other key distribution workflows for its customers.

Why it matters

The food distribution industry is a massive, complex system that controls billions of dollars in perishable inventory each year. However, it still relies heavily on manual work and legacy infrastructure, leaving significant room for improvement through AI automation. Anchr's platform could help distributors increase efficiency, reduce costs, and better respond to changing demand signals.

The details

Anchr's co-founders, Tzar Taraporvala and Smayan Mehr, have over two decades of experience in the industry and saw firsthand the problems caused by outdated technology. They spent months studying workflows at a Boston-based seafood distributor, finding issues like orders being manually entered at 3 a.m. Anchr's early customers have already seen significant benefits, with one reclaiming 40% of daily work time for a sales team and another on track to increase average order size by $65 per order.

  • Anchr was founded more than two decades ago by Tzar Taraporvala and Smayan Mehr.
  • The company announced its $5.8 million seed round on March 10, 2026.

The players

Anchr Inc.

An AI-native company focused on automating tasks in the food supply distribution chain.

Tzar Taraporvala

Co-founder and co-CEO of Anchr.

Smayan Mehr

Co-founder and co-CEO of Anchr.

a16z Speedrun

One of the lead investors in Anchr's $5.8 million seed round.

Anterra Capital

One of the lead investors in Anchr's $5.8 million seed round.

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What they’re saying

“We built Anchr to become the intelligent layer that works alongside teams every single day, automating away the tedious, unsexy parts of the job to create truly material value for a margin-strapped business.”

— Tzar Taraporvala, Co-founder and co-CEO, Anchr (SiliconANGLE)

“If the first era of enterprise software digitized record-keeping, we believe the next era will automate it. We call that shift Enterprise Resource Automation — and Anchr is building this inevitable operating layer.”

— Smayan Mehra, Co-founder and Co-CEO, Anchr (SiliconANGLE)

What’s next

Anchr plans to continue expanding its AI-powered automation capabilities to cover more aspects of the food distribution supply chain, with the goal of becoming the central coordination system for all decisions related to moving products and capital.

The takeaway

Anchr's AI platform represents a significant opportunity to modernize the fragmented and manual food distribution industry, potentially driving major efficiency gains and cost savings for distributors through intelligent automation.