The retail technology week in numbers
50…Online electrical retailer, AO World, will hire 50 new IT roles across its Bolton and Manchester offices over the next 12 months
2,000…Tesco and Amazon provide the best in-store and online experience respectively, according to research by RetailEXPO involving 2,000 UK shoppers.
$50 million…ThousandEyes has raised $50 million in a Series D round led by GV (formerly Google Ventures), bringing its total funding to more than $110 million.
2…The Kroger Co. has said that its next two Ocado e-commerce centres will be located in central Florida and the Mid-Atlantic regions, building on its first one in Cincinnati.
1,000…Artificial intelligence (AI) is the emerging technology that attracted the largest number of investors during 2018, according to GlobalData. More than 1,900 investors funded 1,000 AI-based companies in 2018, including Horizon Robotics, Beijing SenseTime, Zoox, Yitu Technology and Pony.ai.
$138.8 billion…Walmart's all-important holiday sales didn’t disappoint, with its e-commerce business emerging as a star performer. Total Q4 revenue was $138.8 billion, with a 1.9% like-for-like increase of $2.5 billion, and profit stood at $3.69 billion. Whilst Walmart US eCommerce sales grew 43%.
$60 million…Redis Labs, best known as the creator of the free, open source Redis database, has raised $60 million in Series E financing led by a new investor, Francisco Partners.
36%…Just 36% of retail business leaders say digital transformation is a priority in the next 12 months, according to KCOM research.
6…The John Lewis Partnership has shortlisted six businesses following a pitch day for its JLAB innovation programme.
750…Fashion retailer Triumph is rolling out Diebold Nixdorf tech in 750 stores across 23 countries.
$10 million…Crypto payment processor, PayBear, has rebranded to Savvy. The move comes as the venture, which is used by over 3,000 online merchants and has thus far processed $10 million-plus, expands its offering outside of e-commerce and into the consumer market.
2…Walmart’s Store N°8 innovation hub has launched virtual reality startup Spatial&, the second company it has incubated, following in the footsteps of Jetblack, founded by Jenny Fleiss, Co-founder of Rent the Runway.
