January always tells the truth if you know how to listen. The volume drops, the scoreboard resets, and what remains is execution. Presto Phoenix just spoke clearly, closing a $10M growth round led by Metropolitan Partners Group, joined by Remus Capital, Link Ventures, and strategic angels including ElevenLabs CEO Mati Staniszewski. Not a comeback tour. More like a controlled burn followed by lift.
Presto Phoenix exists because gravity is optional when you know the math. Founded in Oct 2008 by Rajat Suri, who traded an MIT doctoral path for an apron and a front row seat to restaurant reality, this company earned its edge the slow way. 15+ years in enterprise restaurant tech is not theory. It is scars, scale, and pattern recognition. The Touch tablet era paid the bills. Voice AI sharpened the blade.
After the 2021 Ventoux CCM SPAC and the 2024 restructuring that took the company private, Presto Phoenix emerged leaner, louder, and surgically focused. Hundreds of live drive thrus. 12 enterprise brands. Millions of real transactions processed in 2025. 98% order accuracy while humans hover near 89%. Service times trimmed by up to 47 seconds. Upsell math that turns conversation into revenue. Wienerschnitzel alone saw a 5% lift, averaging $330K per store annually. That is not optimism. That is arithmetic.
CEO Gee Lefevre brings operator calm and capital discipline, while Chairman and Co Founder Krishna K. Gupta plays the long game with clarity and teeth. CTO Bill Healey has been building this stack longer than most competitors have been booking steak dinners. CFO Lillian Meyer keeps the numbers honest. COO Kat Hoffman Flynt knows restaurants from the inside out. Michael Chorey, fresh off building Wendy’s FreshAI, now runs Presto IQ because data should talk back. Susan Louie Shinoff makes sure the future is compliant, not chaotic.
Voice matters in a drive thru. Literally. The ElevenLabs partnership made sure Presto Voice sounds human without pretending to be one. Multilingual. Hardware agnostic. POS friendly. Installed in hours, not quarters. Three of every four drive thru AI systems in the US already say Presto, whether the customer knows it or not.
Phoenix is not a metaphor here. It is an operating model. Burn off what no longer compounds. Fund what does. The next 12 months will separate demos from deployments and press releases from purchase orders. Presto Phoenix is not asking for attention. It is taking orders.
Startups Startup Funding Venture Capital AI Voice AI Restaurant Restaurant Tech Enterprise Enterprise Tech Enterprise AI SaaS Data Data Driven Compliance Technology Innovation Tech Ecosystem Startup Ecosystem DCTalks
