Canals has raised a $35 million Series A led by Base10 Partners, CEO Michael Delgado told Axios Pro, staking the round on one of the least digitized corners of the U.S. economy: wholesale distribution.

The sizing of the target market is the pitch's centerpiece. The U.S. wholesale distribution industry accounts for $8.2 trillion in economic activity, according to figures cited by Axios that trace to the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors. Canals' thesis is straightforward — that a channel of that scale remains bogged down by tedious, manual work, and that distributors will pay for software that removes it.

What the round does not yet disclose is equally relevant for distribution executives weighing the vendor's durability. Canals has not published customer counts, transaction volumes processed through its platform, or revenue figures. The $35 million commitment from Base10 is the concrete, disclosed number; claims about the company's traction within the channel remain assertions until the company or its investors quantify them.

For distributors, the investment matters on two levels. First, it signals continued venture appetite for vertical software aimed at wholesale trade — a sector where enterprise resource planning incumbents and a wave of younger AI-driven tools are competing to automate quoting, ordering, and back-office workflows. Second, the size of the round, a Series A led by a growth-oriented firm in Base10 Partners, gives Canals runway to build out product and sales capacity before distributors' technology budgets tighten or consolidate around fewer platforms.

The channel economics at stake are well understood in the industry. Distributors' gross margins run thin relative to manufacturers and retailers, which makes labor absorbed by tedious manual work — re-keying orders, chasing paperwork, reconciling invoices — a direct drag on operating profit. Any tool that credibly compresses that overhead addresses the metric distributors watch most closely. Whether Canals' product delivers measurable gains in margin or inventory productivity is a question its new capital will help answer through deployment, not through the funding announcement itself.

The round also lands amid a broader pattern: investors have spent the past several years funding startups that apply modern software, and increasingly artificial intelligence, to supply chain and inventory problems that legacy systems handled poorly. Wholesale distribution, despite its $8.2 trillion footprint, has attracted a fraction of the software capital that flowed to adjacent sectors, leaving a competitive field that is still forming. Canals' $35 million positions it as one of the better-funded entrants chasing that gap.

Michael Delgado, the company's chief executive, disclosed the round exclusively to Axios Pro. Base10 Partners led the financing. No valuation, revenue, or customer metrics accompanied the announcement.

The open question for distributors evaluating the vendor is the one that always follows a large Series A: execution. With $35 million in hand and a backer known for data-driven investment discipline, Canals now has the capital to prove — with disclosed volumes and named customers — that its automation of tedious wholesale work converts into the margin and productivity improvements the $8.2 trillion channel has been promised.