Including Jump, Handwave and Xpand: RTIH presents five retail technology funding rounds you need to know about

RTIH rounds up five retail systems ventures who have recently secured significant investments in their businesses, including a real-time inventory and task tracker using wearable Smartbadges to create live 3D store maps, a startup building autonomous, AI powered locations, and a fan experience and ticketing platform.

1. Handwave

Handwave, a biometric startup founded in Latvia, has raised $4.2 million in seed funding to launch its palm-based payment and identity platform in Europe and the US.

The round includes backing from regional investors, led by Practica Capital, with support from FirstPick, Outlast Fund and Inovo.vc, and will fund product development, regulatory certifications, and live retail pilots.

Using proprietary technology, the solution enables customers to onboard themselves, scan their palm using their phone camera, and link payment and loyalty cards, as well as identity credentials, to a digital wallet. Once enrolled, users can hold their palm over a reader to pay, activate loyalty, or confirm their age - no apps, phones, or wallets needed at checkout.

2. Augmodo

Augmodo, a real-time inventory and task tracker using wearable Smartbadges to create live 3D store maps, has closed a $37.5 million Series A funding round.

This was led by TQ Ventures, with participation from existing backers Lerer Hippeau, NewFare, WIN and Interlace, who joined newcomer Arena Holdings - an investment firm founded by Feroz Dewan, former Managing Director at Tiger Global, as well as Jefferson River Capital - the family office of Tony James, former President and COO at Blackstone Group.

In a LinkedIn post, Ross Finman, CEO and Founder at Augmodo, said: “This will accelerate bringing spatial AI to the largest workforce on the planet: retail. Combining wearables plus AI with our Smartbadges is going to change the physical workforce just as much as AI is changing knowledge work today.”

“While there is a lot of excitement about the future across the industry, retail has the biggest physical data problems today and are very grounded applications solving out of stocks, inventory, safety, training, and more.”

3. Xpand

Xpand, a startup building autonomous, AI powered stores, has secured $6 million in a funding round led by Ibex Investors and Emerge.

The company’s executive team, including Chairman and CEO Joel Bar-El, also participated. Bar-El previously co-founded Trax Retail. Other senior team members bring experience from companies including SAP, Retalix, Bringg, and Magic Leap.

Headquartered in Tel Aviv and founded in 2021 under the name 1MRobotics, the venture was rebranded as Xpand to reflect its shift from research and development to commercial deployment. The new capital will accelerate store roll-outs across Europe and North America and fund the expansion of the sales, marketing, and technology teams.

The launch of its first smart autonomous store in Vienna is in the works.

“With this new investment, we are ready to move from vision to global execution,” says Bar-El. “The Vienna store is only the beginning. Our leadership team is deeply committed to bringing scalable, autonomous retail to life.”

4. Riva

Riva Money, a payments firm using blockchain technology with the aim of streamlining the movement of money, has landed a $3 million pre-seed round from Project A as well as angels from Revolut, Monzo and J.P. Morgan.

It will use the cash to expand its operations and roll-out globally, including Europe, Asia and North America, as well as expand its engineering team.

The startup was founded by Niklas Hoejman and Mahendra Katoch, two FinTech professionals with expertise in cross-border payments, who worked at Revolut and Wise, as well as Goldman Sachs and Citigroup.

Even while working for payment innovators, they saw how legacy systems still caused delays, inflated costs, and offered limited transparency, often making the client experience frustrating and opaque. As expats and regular users of international payment services, they also felt these limitations personally.

5. Jump

Fan experience and ticketing platform Jump has closed a Series A funding round of $23 million, bringing the total raised to date to approximately $60 million since its 2021 founding.

The round was led by Alexis Ohanian and Seven Seven Six, and included participation from Courtside Ventures, Will Ventures, Forerunner Ventures, and Drive by DraftKings. It also included a personal investment from Steve Malik, owner of the NWSL’s North Carolina Courage.

So far, 2025 has included the signing of its first client with the Courage and then moving into the NBA and WNBA last month as the exclusive fan experience and ticketing provider for the Timberwolves and Lynx. The pair of Minnesota franchises are co-owned by Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez, who are also co-founders of Jump with company CEO Jordy Leiser.

In a LinkedIn post, Jump said: "For too long, team front offices have been forced to work with siloed tech stacks and without control over the data they require to run like a modern business. The type of technology they needed didn’t exist, so we created it.”

“We set out to change the game and build a truly unified fan experience platform purpose built for sports to transform how professional franchises build, grow, and engage their fan base."