Burt

Product & Competitive Intelligence

Helps AI teams train and deploy specialized models that are 10x faster and cheaper than frontier.

Company Overview

Helps teams train and deploy specialized AI models that outperform general, closed-source alternatives while being 10x faster and cheaper. Targets teams building AI agents where LLM calls are too slow, too expensive, or just not good enough.

Competitive Advantage & Moat

Product Roadmap & Public Announcements

Platform for training and deploying specialized models. Targets teams where LLM calls are too slow, too expensive, or not reliable enough. Helps move from general closed-source models to specialized alternatives that are 10x faster and cheaper.

Signals & Private Analysis

Both founders previously worked at Replo (YC S21), giving strong YC network access. Bobby also has experience at Pirros (YC W23). Model fine-tuning and deployment market growing rapidly as companies shift from prototyping with frontier models to production with specialized ones.

Product Roadmap Priorities

Real-Time Event Tracking
Improving
Operational Efficiency
Operations

AI-powered autonomous shipment tracking and proactive exception alerting across carriers and systems.

In Plain English

An AI agent watches every shipment like a hawk, automatically chasing updates from carriers and alerting your team only when something actually goes wrong.

Analogy

It's like having a tireless intern who refreshes every carrier tracking page every five minutes, reads every email, and only taps you on the shoulder when the building is actually on fire.

Document Intelligence & Risk
Improving
Risk Reduction
Operations

Automated carrier vetting and compliance verification using AI-driven document analysis and risk scoring.

In Plain English

An AI agent reads, verifies, and scores every carrier's insurance, authority, and safety documents so your team doesn't have to play detective with PDFs.

Analogy

It's like a bouncer at a nightclub who instantly checks every ID, calls the DMV to verify it's real, and only bothers the manager when someone shows up with a fake mustache.

Multi-Constraint Optimization
Improving
Revenue Growth
Strategy

Intelligent load building and quoting optimization using multi-agent reasoning over capacity, cost, and constraint data.

In Plain English

An AI agent figures out the best way to fill a truck and price a load by juggling dozens of constraints at once—faster and more accurately than a human planner.

Analogy

It's like a Tetris grandmaster who also happens to be an economist—fitting every box perfectly while making sure you're not leaving money on the table.

Company Overview

Key Team Members

  • Bobby Zhong, Co-Founder & CEO
  • Kurt Sharma, Co-Founder & CTO

Both founders shipped production LLM systems at Replo (YC S21), giving firsthand experience with the pain of using general-purpose models for specific use cases. Bobby Zhong (UCI CS dropout) has additional experience at Pirros (YC W23), providing depth in agentic architectures. Kurt Sharma (UC Berkeley EECS) brings strong technical foundations. Strong YC alumni network for distribution.

Funding History

  • 2026 | Bobby Zhong and Kurt Sharma co-found Burt.
  • 2026 | Accepted into Y Combinator W26 batch.
  • 2026 | Product launched at trainburt.com.

Competitors

  • Model Fine-Tuning: Together AI, Anyscale, Modal.
  • Model Hosting: Replicate, Baseten, Banana.
  • LLM Optimization: Predibase (LoRA), OpenPipe.
  • Inference: Fireworks AI, Groq, Cerebras.