Six retail technology funding rounds you need to know about
RTIH rounds up the retail systems ventures who have been making waves with major investments, including RevLifter, Reach, ShopThing, Pack, and Everyrealm.
1. RevLifter
The North East Development Capital Fund (NEDCF), supported by the European Regional Development Fund and managed by Maven Capital Partners and Gresham House Ventures, has completed a £3 million funding round for RevLifter.
The latter has developed an AI powered technology platform that enables brands to deliver e-commerce personalised deals and content. The transaction is split evenly between NEDCF and GHV.
2. Reach
Cross border e-commerce payments enabler, Reach, has secured a $30 million investment.
The round was led by Vistara Growth and also included Bluesky Equities, Tribune Capital, and Rising Tide.
The capital will be used to scale up Reach’s development teams, with a focus on merchant success and onboarding, as well as expansion into new shopper geographies to help grow local acquiring networks for both merchants and partners.
3. Everyrealm
Everyrealm, a developer of metaverse content and infrastructure, has revealed that a host of A-list entertainment talent are now investors in the ten-month-old company, alongside existing backers Andreessen Horowitz and Coinbase.
The venture’s latest investors include The Weeknd, Will Smith, Marc Anthony, Nas, Paris Hilton, Gunna, Baby Keem, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Gene Simmons, Lil Baby, Mario Götze, Hannah Bronfman, Fara Leff, Ebonie Ward, Miye Oni, Belly, Pro Logic, and NAV.
Everyrealm announced in February the closing of a $60 million Series A financing round led by Andreessen Horowitz. It said that this valued it in the “hundreds of millions” but declined to reveal an exact number.
4. Tern
Tern, a US-based startup that aims to make e-commerce returns easier for consumers, less expensive for merchants, and better for the planet, has announced its launch and partnership with online thrift and consignment store Swap.com.
This closely follows Tern’s raise of $5 million in seed funding, led by Resolute Ventures and Rajesh Ramanad with participation from Tekton Ventures, Partech Partners, OVO Group, Cyber Mentor Fund, as well as a number of angel investors.
5. ShopThing
ShopThing, a live shopping venture focused on luxury brands, has bagged $10 million in Series A funding led by Origin Ventures, with participation from Pritzker Group and Interplay.
The startup’s app allows its network of shoppers and influencers to walk into stores and select products, live stream them to audiences and then purchase an item on a customer’s behalf.
On the consumer side, customers can browse the app to see the live deals that shoppers have found.
Once a customer makes a purchase, ShopThing fulfils the order.
6. Pack
Pack, a low-code front-end platform for headless commerce used by direct-to-consumer (DTC) and omnichannel brands, has raised $3 million in a seed round led by Alpaca.
Additional participation came from Anthemis Group, Anorak, Space Station, Anti-Fund, SuperAngel.Fund (Ben Zises), Irrvrnt VC, and Mana Ventures.
Pack will use the funding to further develop its front-end platform and expand its partnerships, engineering, sales, and marketing teams.
“I wanted to jump into the headless space, but I wasn’t excited about anything that I was seeing for the longest time,” says Aubrie Pagano, General Partner at Alpaca.
“It was a lot of smoke and mirrors. But when I came across Pack, it was a platform that I wished I had when I was growing my brand and it was clear the team had a roadmap that was going to win.”
