Including Wonder, mmERCH, and Pandion: ten retail technology funding rounds you need to know about
RTIH rounds up ten retail systems ventures who have recently secured significant investments in their businesses, including blockchain enabled Web3 fashion startups, customer journey management platforms, and computer vision and AI powered warehouse inventory monitoring solutions.
1. TheyDo
Customer journey management platform, TheyDo, has secured an additional $34 million in a Series A+ funding round.
Blossom Capital led the round, supported by other existing investors Arches Capital and Innovation Quarter and joined by global customer experience evangelist Steven van Belleghem, Highsage Ventures and 20Sales.
The round will enable TheyDo to increase R&D, focus on AI and data ingestion, and build out its customer facing team in the United States.
The startup was founded in 2019 out of the need for a solution to move beyond mapping customer journeys in large static documents to a live platform that enables a bias for action.
With TheyDo businesses are able to do strategy, planning and execution all in one place and align the silos with the customer journey.
2. mmERCH
Blockchain enabled Web3 fashion startup, mmERCH, has announced a $6.4 million seed funding round at a $25.7 million post-money valuation led by Liberty City Ventures, with participation from 6529 Holdings, Christie’s Ventures, and Flamingo DAO.
Launched in late 2023 by Founder and CEO Colby Mugrabi, mmERCH is supported by a team of founders, creators, collectors, curators, artists, academics, and authors.
The fundraise announcement comes as it is set to release its inaugural collection in April.
According to a press release, it targets “a growing community of individuals at the intersection of art, fashion, and technology – leveraging generative design to create collections of singular pieces or what mmERCH calls neo-couture.
“The brand is driven by a commitment to expertly curated collections brought to life with a playful spirit, a digital link, a range of benefits both virtual and physical, and a distinctive artistic lens.”
3. Greenly
Greenly has announced a $52 million Series B funding round led by Fidelity International Strategic Ventures, two years after a $23 million Series A.
The startup says that the latest fundraising effort establishes it as a global leader in a market poised for massive adoption, spurred by new regulations like the EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and the recent US requirement for public companies to report their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
In addition to Fidelity International Strategic Ventures, the round pulled in new investors such as BGV (Benhamou Global Ventures), Move Capital, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and HSBC, while existing partners like XAnge and Energy Impact Partners returned.
Brian Halligan, Co-Founder and Chairperson, HubSpot, also participated.
Leveraging generative AI, Greenly streamlines collection of large corporate datasets stemming from multiple softwares (Utilities, ERP, cloud, freight etc.), and automates analytics, using its own user-generated learning.
With 2,000 customers worldwide, it has been partnering with the likes of BNP Paribas, AXA, and L’Oreal, to promote decarbonisation across their wider ecosystem.
4. Pandion
Pandion, a specialist in e-commerce residential delivery and founded by Amazon Air founder Scott Ruffin, has secured a $41.5 million Series B funding round led by Revolution Growth.
Other participants included existing investors Playground Global, Prologis Ventures, Bow Capital, Telstra Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures, and Schematic Ventures and new backers Proof and Sentinel Global.
Pandion will use the new funding to accelerate the growth of its residential parcel delivery network, including building new technology offerings, expanding its geographic reach, and increasing delivery speed for customers like Saks Fifth Avenue.
“With this new funding and the expansion of our leadership team, Pandion is positioned to disrupt e-commerce delivery for brands of all sizes,” says Ruffin.
“Companies can no longer rely on just the national parcel carriers, but they also don't have the resources to build their own parcel delivery capability or a diversified network of national and regional carriers. They need an alternative. That's where Pandion comes in.”
5. Gather AI
Gather AI, a provider of computer vision and AI powered warehouse inventory monitoring solutions, has announced a $17 million Series A-1 round led by Bain Capital Ventures with participation from Tribeca Venture Partners, Dundee Venture Capital, Expa, and Bling Capital.
This provides a total of $34 million raised to date. The cash will be invested in scaling operations.
Gather AI was founded in 2017 by Sankalp Arora, Daniel Maturana and Geetesh Dubey, after launching from Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute.
It automates inventory visibility challenges through drones across third-party logistics, manufacturing, and retail facilities, laying claim to much richer data than warehouses can currently obtain with barcodes.
Customers include NFI, GEODIS, DSV, Barrett Distribution, and DPI Specialty Foods (KeHE).
6. Wonder
Wonder, Marc Lore's New York City-based food delivery startup, has completed a $700 million funding round.
All of its major existing shareholders participated in the round, including NEA, GV, Accel, Bain Capital Ventures, Forerunner, Alpine, and Harmony, as well as further investment from Watar Partners.
Lore also personally stumped up $100 million, while new backers include Dragoneer, Jefferies, Red & Blue Ventures, CAZ Investments, Kuvare Insurance, and Fubon Ventures. Amex Ventures and Nestlé also participated as strategic investors.
In an online post, Lore, the former President and CEO at Walmart U.S. eCommerce, said: “We will accelerate the expansion of our physical retail locations, with plans to grow from our current base of 11 locations to 35 by the end of 2024 and 90 by the end of 2025. We’re excited to bring Wonder to more communities throughout the northeast.”
“We will also continue driving culinary innovation by aggressively investing in research and development, including faster cook times, software enhancements, new menu items, new chefs and iconic restaurant partnerships.”
“Customers love features like multi-restaurant ordering and we’ll have many exciting new products and partnerships to talk about soon.”
He added: “And we’ll continue to invest in proprietary technology to drive operational efficiencies across Wonder’s vertically integrated system: backend technology to drive down food waste; next-gen kitchen designs to improve throughput and consistency; and an enhanced delivery network that will ensure that couriers – and, more importantly, customers’ orders – never wait.”
7. Bite
Bite, a provider of intelligent kiosk solutions for fast casual and quick service restaurants, has secured $9 million in Series A funding.
The round was led by Staley Capital, with participation from Graham Partners, Food-X, One Way Ventures and Tamarisc Ventures.
Bite’s self-service kiosk software provides the ability to drive digital ordering at fast casual and quick serve restaurants.
Its in-store ordering platform currently helps more than 1,100 restaurant locations improve labour efficiencies and leverage personalisation, and integrates into existing tech stacks.
“The restaurant industry is facing a very challenging environment, struggling to generate profits in the midst of an unprecedented labour shortage, rising minimum wages and cost inflation,” says Brandon Barton, CEO at Bite.
“Our self-service kiosk software gives restaurants the tools to succeed in this environment, by leveraging our technology for tasks that can be digitised and reallocating labor to higher priority responsibilities, including greeting guests, preparing food and managing the handoff of completed orders.”
Barton adds: “Coupled with our use of AI to personalise the ordering experience, we are also able to help offset increasing labor costs by driving higher average checks per order.”
“We are very appreciative of our investors who understand Bite’s differentiated offering and the value we provide to our restaurant partners. We look forward to executing on our ambitious growth plans by helping restaurants grow revenue and improve both employee satisfaction and the guest experience.”
8. dataplor
Global location intelligence provider, dataplor, has announced a $10.6 million Series A funding round led by Spark Capital.
This takes the total raised to date to $20.3 million.
The round, which included participation from Quest Venture Partners, Acronym Venture Capital, Circadian Ventures, Two Lanterns Venture Partners and APA Venture Partners, will boost dataplor’s expansion plans, as it looks to build “the most accurate, comprehensive and dynamically updated database of global Point of Interest (POI) data on the market”.
It currently offers data coverage across more than 200 countries and territories, encompassing over 300 million locations and 15,000+ brands.
Companies in industries including technology, mapping, search, third party logistics, consumer packaged goods (CPG), telecom, investing, real estate and finance tap dataplor’s global coverage to power strategic decisions and investments.
9. Cobot
Collaborative Robotics (aka Cobot) has raised $100 million in Series B funding led by General Catalyst and joined by Bison Ventures, Industry Ventures and Lux Capital.
Existing investors Sequoia Capital, Khosla Ventures, Mayo Clinic, Neo, 1984 Ventures, MVP Ventures and Calibrate Ventures also participated, bringing the total funding raised to over $140 million in less than two years.
Founded in 2022 by former Amazon VP of Robotics Brad Porter, the Cobot team includes robotics and AI experts from Amazon, Apple, Meta, Google, Microsoft, NASA, and Waymo.
The new capital will be used to further expand the team and advance its commercial deployments. Paul Kwan, Managing Director at General Catalyst, joins Alfred Lin from Sequoia Capital on Collaborative Robotics' Board of Directors.
"Getting our first robots in the field earlier this year, coupled with today's investment, are major milestones as we bring cobots with human-level capability into the industries of today," says Porter.
”We see a virtuous cycle where more robots in the field lead to improved AI and a more cost-effective supply chain. This funding will help us accelerate getting more robots into the real world."
10. Veesual
Veesual, a Paris-based AI powered virtual try-on platform for the fashion industry, has closed a $7.5 million dollar seed round led by AVP (AXA Venture Partners) and Techstars.
The investment will accelerate the company’s plans to expand into the US market by opening its first office there, recruiting senior talent, and enhancing its current product offering for American apparel companies.
A cornerstone of this expansion is a new partnership with women’s fashion brand Eileen Fisher.
This will see Veesual’s virtual try-on technology integrated into the latter’s online shopping experience.
"We are thrilled to be the first US brand to partner with Veesual on this innovative new virtual try-on tool,” says Blair Silverman, Vice President of E-commerce at Eileen Fisher.
“We are committed to inclusivity, designing clothes that cater to every body shape. Navigating online shopping poses challenges, particularly in predicting how garments fit diverse body types.”
“Our collaboration with Veesual addresses these challenges head-on and we are proud to be launching a tool that is sure to be a new standard for e-commerce.”
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