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 Starship Technologies, fabric, Depict.ai and Flashfood.
1. Grab2Go
Estonia-based autonomous store technology startup Grab2Go has secured €750,000 in funding.
It will use the cash for product development, expanding its team and its go to market strategy.
The company has developed convenience store technology based on artificial intelligence, which forms part of a software platform.
This analyses consumer behaviour and sales dynamics, enabling stores to organise sales, logistics and management more efficiently.
The offering includes a robot that can observe and change a store’s processes, for example, the internal temperature or the shelf life of a product.
2. fabric
fabric, a startup that provides a headless platform for e-commerce experiences, has closed a Series C funding round of $140 million led by Softbank Vision Fund 2, with participation from Forerunner Ventures, Glynn Capital and existing investors Redpoint Ventures, Norwest Ventures and Stripes.
This closely follows a Series B round and values fabric at approximately $1.5 billion.
Funds from the Series C will be utilised for accelerating product development largely through automation and intelligence, and geographic expansion.
3. Flashfood
Flashfood, a Toronto-based mobile marketplace providing customers access to discounted food nearing its best by date, has secured $12.3 million in a Series A funding round led by S2G Ventures.
Follow on investment came from ArcTern Ventures and existing backers including General Catalyst, Food Retail Ventures, Rob Gierkink and Alex Moorhead.
S2G Ventures MD and founder of OpenTable, Chuck Templeton, will join the Flashfood board of directors.
4. Starship Technologies
Autonomous delivery services specialist, Starship Technologies, has raised $100 million in the last 30 days, including a new $42 million Series B funding round led by the Japanese-Nordic VC firm NordicNinja and Estonia’s Taavet+Sten.
The Series B cash will help Starship further scale its service and launch in new cities in North America and Europe, including university campuses in the US.
An undisclosed amount of funding is also being donated directly to the Red Cross in Ukraine.
5. Weee!
Weee!, a California-based grocery delivery platform providing Asian and Hispanic products, has landed $425 million in a funding round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2.
Greyhound Capital and existing shareholders also took part in the round that took the venture’s total capital raised so far to $800 million.
It plans to use the fresh funds to expand its customer base, offer grocery and food delivery services to new geographies and develop warehouse automation.
6. Depict.ai
Depict.ai, which has developed an AI platform that provides product recommendations to e-commerce retailers without needing any transaction data, has bagged $17 million in a Series A round of funding led by Tiger Global.
This came a year after the company raised $2.8 million in seed funding led by Initialized Capital.
Customers include Office Depot and Staples.
Check out our interview with Oliver Edholm, Co-Founder, Depict.AI, here.
