duty-drawback
(4)
Pax
Pax is an AI-native customs broker that automates and maximizes U.S. tariff refunds through duty drawback - the CBP program that lets companies recover up to 99% of import duties on goods that are later re-exported, manufactured for export, or destroyed. Founded by MIT PhD Penny Chen and repeat founder Chris Le, Pax pitches itself as 'TurboTax for duty drawback,' using LLM-powered document extraction plus deterministic optimization algorithms to file audit-ready claims in weeks instead of the industry-standard 9-12 months, while recovering roughly 15% more than legacy providers. The company raised a $4.5M seed round in 2025 and is a Y Combinator Summer 2024 company.
Caspian
Caspian is an AI-native global trade advisory platform that helps importers and exporters recover unclaimed import duties and stay compliant as tariff rules shift. Founded in 2024 by ex-Flexport operators Justin Sherlock and Matt Ebeweber, the San Francisco company is a licensed US customs broker and CBP-approved software vendor. Its platform ingests shipping and inventory data to identify eligible duty drawback and refunds, then files the paperwork with US Customs in days rather than months - replacing the spreadsheet-and-email legacy process that leaves billions of dollars unclaimed every year.
Penny Chen
Penny Chen is the co-founder and CEO of Pax, the Y Combinator (S24) startup rebuilding duty drawback - the U.S. program that refunds import tariffs - as an AI-native brokerage. An MIT PhD and former research scientist at Amazon and Flexport, she stumbled on duty drawback while building supply-chain algorithms and saw a math problem hiding inside a bureaucratic one: each year roughly $10-15 billion in eligible refunds go unclaimed because legacy brokers take 10-20% and won't touch claims under $100k. Pax turns the rulebook into algorithms and LLM data extraction, promising a TurboTax-style experience that cuts filing from 9-12 months to a few weeks. The company raised $4.5M in seed funding led by Initialized Capital in April 2025.
Justin Sherlock
Justin Sherlock is the Co-Founder and CEO of Caspian, an AI-native trade advisory platform tackling the $130 billion in unclaimed duty refunds sitting in global supply chains. A Harvard economist and Wharton MBA, he spent five years at Flexport scaling its financing arm past $1 billion before going out to build what he saw was missing: automated customs intelligence that actually gets importers their money back.