December 23, 2025 shows up quietly, then refuses to be ignored. Oscar AI just closed a $3.1M Series round, and the number is modest only if you ignore what it represents. Washington, DC startups do not chase noise. They chase leverage. This one does it by taking the messiest operational data in retail and QSR and turning it into something people can actually use before their second coffee. Oscar AI, formerly Azalio, has been building toward this moment since January 2022, and the arc finally snapped into focus.
Oscar AI was born inside the reality of multi-unit operators juggling POS, payroll, HR, labor, inventory, and field ops that do not talk to each other and never will without a fight. The platform listens to all of it, translates it, and speaks back in plain language. No dashboards for sport. No technical theater. Just daily, weekly, and monthly clarity that tells operators what is working, what is breaking, and what needs attention now. It is operational intelligence, not reporting cosplay.
That perspective tracks when you look at Quratul-Ann Malik. Policy work at the National Economic Council teaches you fast how systems collapse under complexity. Leading TechHire showed what happens when labor, technology, and execution are misaligned. When Quratul-Ann Malik stepped into enterprise software, the thesis was already written. Remove friction. Respect operators’ time. Build tools that make decisions easier instead of louder.
The early foundation matters. Co-founder and former CTO Sadia Ashraf helped architect the original system, bringing deep enterprise and AI experience before departing in September 2023 to build again. That transition forced discipline. The company matured. The mission sharpened. In September 2024, Mattia Melillo joined as COO and CRO, bringing GTM muscle and revenue rigor that early traction demands. Founder instinct met operating cadence, and the business started moving differently.
Under the hood, Josh Cano is engineering scale without shortcuts, making sure the platform does not crack as customers grow. Qaiser Abbas is pushing the intelligence layer forward, turning raw operational exhaust into narrative insight using modern ML and LLMs. Muhammad Saqib is stitching the system together so integrations feel native instead of negotiated. Lean team, high signal, no wasted motion.
The $3.1M Series comes three years after a $2M seed, pushing total funding to $5.1M and signaling real validation from the market. The rebrand from Azalio to Oscar AI in April 2024 was not cosmetic. It marked a shift from workforce tooling to full operational intelligence, validated by early adoption across major franchise brands and mid-market operators managing 5 to 100+ locations.
Oscar AI is not trying to impress analysts or chase vanity metrics. It is built for operators who need answers, not abstractions, and for teams tired of spending hours reconciling numbers that should have agreed in the first place. The capital extends the runway, but the real value is momentum. When software starts sounding like the people using it, something fundamental has clicked.
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