Technology

Palona AI debuts AI platform for restaurants after $20M funding round

Photo: Palona AI

August 17, 2026

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Palona AI has launched what it calls a multimodal AI operating layer for physical businesses, debuting the technology in restaurants before expanding to other brick-and-mortar sectors.

The launch coincides with the close of Palona's Series A funding round, bringing the company's total funding to $20 million, including converted SAFE notes. Investors in the round include Ardenwood Ventures, CrimsonOx, UpHonest, Turbo, Llama Ventures, Neo, Fusion Fund, Defy and Maynard Webb, along with other institutional, strategic and individual backers.

Palona said its platform is designed to connect customer demand, live operations and automated action for restaurant operators, and is already deployed with chains including Din Tai Fung, Mountain Mike's Pizza, Giordano's, Rooted Hospitality and Cali BBQ.

"Physical businesses need AI that can understand what is happening and act in real time," Maria Zhang, founder and CEO of Palona AI, said in a press release. "Palona turns demand, operational context and live signals into actions that drive revenue, quality and execution."

The platform's product suite is built around three areas: Revenue expansion, revenue intelligence and operations excellence. It is designed to capture and convert demand from phone calls, catering requests, private events and large-order inquiries, then flag intent, value and urgency for restaurant managers. The company describes the underlying process as a continuous loop of capturing, understanding, acting on and learning from operational signals.

Palona pointed to early results from operators using the platform. A production study spanning three brands — Cali BBQ, Rooted Hospitality and Giordano's — recorded 481 orders across 194 location-days and identified 305 large-order and catering inquiries across seven restaurants. At Cali BBQ, which has used the platform for more than a year, Father's Day revenue rose 20% year over year, and Palona became the chain's highest average-order-value channel as its capabilities expanded to cover catering and large orders.

"Before Palona, calls we couldn't answer represented demand we couldn't capture," Shawn Walchef, CEO of Cali BBQ, said in the release. "Now we're converting more of those conversations into orders and identifying catering opportunities we previously had no dedicated process to manage. For an operator, that's where AI becomes real. It creates measurable revenue while helping the team execute better."

Palona also said it has developed a proprietary "Interaction Model for Physical AI" that goes beyond object detection or scene description, aiming instead to track how people, objects, locations and processes relate to one another over time. The company holds U.S. Patent No. 12,481,517 for orchestrating specialized AI agents based on user intent, model performance and real-time computing demands.

While restaurants are Palona's initial market, the company said the platform is designed to extend to other physical businesses where customers and frontline staff interact.

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