What are the fundraising trends in the AI shopping market?
In our AI shopping market deck, you will find everything you need to understand the market
SUMMARY
We analyzed publicly disclosed equity rounds raised by pure-play AI shopping companies between January 2024 and May 2026, using a minimum disclosed deal size of $300K and excluding debt, grants, acquisitions, undisclosed-amount rounds, and companies outside the core shopping discovery-to-decision scope. The resulting sample contains 35 disclosed deals across 33 unique companies, including 8 year-to-date 2026 deals for a combined $77.38M.
More capital is entering the AI shopping market, but the increase is selective rather than evenly distributed. Full-year capital rose from $120.6M in 2024 to $251.6M in 2025, and year-to-date 2026 has already reached $77.38M versus $18.2M over the comparable early-2025 period.
Deal count is also rising. The AI shopping market moved from 7 qualifying deals in 2024 to 20 in 2025, while the year-to-date 2026 window has 8 deals compared with 4 over the same early-year period in 2025.
The market remains highly concentrated. In year-to-date 2026, Phia's $35M Series A represents 45.2% of all disclosed capital, and the top three rounds account for 77.5% of the total.
Round sizes are still early-stage in character. The year-to-date 2026 median round is $5.85M, while the average is $9.67M, which means a few larger Series A rounds pull the average above what a typical company raises.
The AI shopping market has produced no $50M+ round so far in 2026. That matters because 2024 and 2025 were each shaped by a large consumer-facing round, Daydream at $50M in 2024 and Gensmo at $60M in 2025.
AI Shopping Assistants lead on capital in year-to-date 2026, with $35.98M, or 46.5% of disclosed dollars. AI Merchandising Tools lead on deal count, with 4 of 8 deals, showing that investor activity is spreading toward brand-side infrastructure for agentic commerce.
AI Product Search has lost financing momentum after dominating 2024. It captured 67.6% of 2024 capital, only 4.6% of 2025 capital, and no qualifying year-to-date 2026 capital through May.
North America and Europe each produced 4 year-to-date 2026 deals, but North America captured 81.8% of capital. The AI shopping market is becoming transatlantic by company formation, but remains North America-led by check size.
First financings remain common, representing 62.5% of year-to-date 2026 deals. But they account for only 29.3% of capital, which means new companies are still entering while the largest dollars move toward more validated follow-on rounds.
This chart, featured in our AI shopping market deck, shows how market revenue is split across customer segments in the AI shopping market
Is more or less capital going into the AI shopping market?
More capital is going into the AI shopping market, but the most important reading is not that every company is suddenly raising easily. The better answer is that AI shopping capital has increased sharply versus both the comparable early-2025 period and the full-year 2024 baseline, while remaining concentrated in a few conviction rounds.
So far in 2026, the AI shopping market has raised $77.38M across 8 deals through May. Over the comparable early-2025 period, the market raised $18.2M across 4 deals. That means capital is up more than 4x, while deal count has doubled.
The full-year comparison points in the same direction. Full-year 2025 produced $251.6M across 20 deals, compared with $120.6M across 7 deals in 2024. The AI shopping market therefore expanded on both dollars and activity before the 2026 year-to-date acceleration appeared.
The caveat is concentration. Phia's $35M Series A accounts for 45.2% of year-to-date 2026 capital, and the top three 2026 deals account for 77.5%. The real signal is selective conviction, not a broad funding wave where every subcategory and region is flush with capital.
The practical takeaway is that the AI shopping market is no longer flat or merely experimental. Investors are writing larger checks when a company appears to control consumer intent, AI-agent visibility, product-data infrastructure, or conversion-critical shopping workflows.
Is AI shopping funding driven by more deals or larger rounds?
AI shopping funding is being driven by both more deals and larger leading rounds, but the answer changes depending on the comparison window. Full-year 2025 was mainly driven by more deals, while the year-to-date 2026 signal is driven by more deals and a stronger top end.
Full-year 2025 had 20 deals, compared with 7 deals in 2024. Capital rose from $120.6M to $251.6M, but average round size fell from $17.2M to $12.58M and median round size was almost flat at $8.0M in 2024 versus $7.75M in 2025. That means 2025 growth came mostly from a wider funding pipeline.
The early-2026 comparison looks different. Year-to-date 2026 has 8 deals versus 4 in the comparable 2025 window, but capital rose from $18.2M to $77.38M. Average round size increased from $4.55M to $9.67M, and median round size increased from $3.6M to $5.85M.
The explanation is stage mix. The comparable early-2025 window was entirely early-stage and small, with qeen.ai's $10M seed as the largest deal. Year-to-date 2026 includes two meaningful Series A rounds: Phia at $35M and Spangle AI at $15M.
For deeper benchmarks on how AI shopping deal sizes, medians, and round distributions are shifting, see our AI shopping market deck. It breaks the funding cycle down with updated comparisons and category-level context.
Is AI shopping capital moving toward later-stage or earlier-stage companies?
AI shopping capital is still overwhelmingly moving toward early-stage companies, but it is shifting from pure seed experimentation toward Series A validation. The market is not yet moving toward late-stage scale-ups; it is moving from new-company formation toward early winners raising larger follow-on rounds.
So far in 2026, 100% of AI shopping capital has gone to Seed and Series A companies. There are no Series B, Series C, Series D, or growth equity rounds in the year-to-date 2026 sample. By deal count, 6 of the 8 deals are Seed rounds and 2 are Series A rounds.
Dollars make the market look more mature than deal count. Series A rounds represent only 25.0% of year-to-date 2026 deals but 64.6% of capital. Phia and Spangle AI together account for $50M of the $77.38M raised.
The full-year history supports the same reading. In 2025, Seed rounds represented 60.0% of deals and 59.4% of capital, while Series B capital came from just one round, FERMÀT's $45M Series B. In 2024, Series B+ capital was 37.3% of the total, but that came from only two rounds, Constructor and Connectly.
The honest interpretation is that the AI shopping market is early-stage-heavy but no longer purely concept-stage. The biggest checks increasingly go to companies that can show traction, distribution, data access, product depth, or a credible role in agentic commerce.
This chart, featured in our AI shopping market deck, compares the main business model options for AI shopping assistants
Is the AI shopping market maturing or still experimental?
The AI shopping market is still experimental by company count, but it is maturing by investor behavior, category definition, and larger validation rounds. The market has moved past pure experimentation, but it has not yet reached broad institutional maturity.
Several indicators still point to experimentation. Seed and unknown-stage rounds dominate the deal base: in full-year 2025, Seed and unknown rounds represented 16 of 20 deals, and in year-to-date 2026, Seed rounds represent 6 of 8 deals.
The investor base is also fragmented. No disclosed investor appeared more than once in 2024, only Info Edge Ventures appeared more than once in 2025, and no named investor appears more than once so far in 2026. That lack of repeat concentration shows that the category has not yet developed a stable specialist funding ecosystem.
But the maturing signals are real. The market expanded from three funded categories in 2024 to six in 2025, and year-to-date 2026 Series A rounds already account for nearly two-thirds of capital. Investors are no longer just asking whether AI can affect shopping; they are testing specific control points.
The best description is structured experimentation. AI shopping investors are now separating consumer shopping assistants, AI-agent visibility, product-data infrastructure, AI-native merchandising, recommendations, and product advice instead of treating the whole field as one generic AI retail theme.
Are new startups still entering the AI shopping market?
Yes, new startups are still entering the AI shopping market, and new-company formation remains one of the clearest signs that the category is open. The strongest evidence is the high share of first financings in both full-year 2025 and year-to-date 2026.
So far in 2026, first financings represent 62.5% of deals, or 5 of 8 rounds. These include companies such as Consio AI, Limy, The New Era of Shopping, Lemrock, and Zellor. The category mix is telling because many new entrants are not just building generic ecommerce tools; they are targeting agent visibility, product advice, catalog readiness, and shopping assistants.
The comparable early-2025 period had an even higher first-financing share, at 75.0% of deals. Full-year 2025 also showed strong formation, with first financings representing 65.0% of deals and 52.1% of capital. That was a much stronger new-entrant signal than 2024, when first financings were only 28.6% of deals.
The nuance is that new startups are entering, but they are not receiving most of the largest dollars in 2026. First financings are 62.5% of deals but only 29.3% of capital, while follow-on rounds absorb the larger checks.
For the broader category view across AI shopping startups, first financings, and subcategory formation, see our full AI shopping market report. It gives more context on which new company types are actually entering the market.
Are more investors entering the AI shopping market?
Yes, more investors are entering the AI shopping market over the full-year comparison, but the 2026 year-to-date signal needs to be read carefully because the current year is incomplete. Investor participation expanded significantly from 2024 to 2025, while 2026 so far shows continued breadth versus the comparable early-2025 window.
In 2024, the AI shopping market had 22 unique disclosed named investors and 8 tier-1 investors. In full-year 2025, the market had approximately 63 unique disclosed investors and 10 tier-1 investors. That is a major expansion in investor participation.
So far in 2026, there are 19 unique disclosed investors across 8 deals, compared with about 11 disclosed investors across 4 deals over the comparable early-2025 period. Tier-1 participation is also credible, with Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, and a16z speedrun appearing in the disclosed investor set.
The caution is that a year-to-date investor count should not be compared directly with a full-year count. The cleaner conclusion is that the AI shopping market broadened structurally in 2025, and the early-2026 window remains stronger than the comparable early-2025 window.
The most important interpretation is that investor participation is broadening but not specializing. More investors are entering the AI shopping market, but the market has not yet developed a concentrated group of repeat category specialists.
This chart, featured in our AI shopping market deck, illustrates yearly funding for AI shopping startups
Are top investors getting more or less active in AI shopping?
Top investors are getting more visible in the AI shopping market, but not more repeatedly active. Elite and high-signal investors are appearing in important rounds, while no top investor has yet established a repeated category ownership pattern.
In 2024, the visible tier-1 set included Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sapphire Ventures, Forerunner Ventures, Index Ventures, GV, Madrona Ventures, Y Combinator, and Alibaba. Their participation mattered because top investors clustered around prominent rounds such as Daydream, Constructor, Shaped, Big Sur AI, and Connectly.
In 2025, high-signal investors included Prosus Ventures, Madrona, Thrive Capital, Greylock, Bain Capital Ventures, Menlo Ventures, 20VC, Kleiner Perkins, and Matrix Partners. In year-to-date 2026, the most visible names include Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, and a16z speedrun, while Madrona continues to appear through Spangle AI.
But top-investor repetition is still thin. No named investor made more than one qualifying 2024 deal. In 2025, only Info Edge Ventures made more than one qualifying deal, through Shoppin'. So far in 2026, no named investor appears in more than one qualifying deal.
The honest interpretation is that top investors are willing to underwrite the AI shopping market when the company has a strong wedge, but they are not yet behaving as if every major fund needs several AI shopping positions. Top-investor activity is episodic and selective, not systematic.
Which AI shopping subcategories are gaining momentum?
AI Merchandising Tools, AI Shopping Assistants, and AI Recommendations are the subcategories gaining momentum in the AI shopping market. AI Merchandising Tools show the clearest deal-count acceleration, while AI Shopping Assistants show the strongest capital pull.
AI Merchandising Tools are the biggest structural momentum story. The category had zero qualifying deals and zero disclosed capital in 2024, then produced 5 deals and $78.6M in 2025. So far in 2026, it has produced 4 of 8 deals and $23.1M.
The reason AI Merchandising Tools are gaining momentum is that the AI shopping market is shifting from better search results on a retailer website toward how brands and catalogs are discovered, ranked, trusted, and transacted inside AI-mediated interfaces. Limy, Cernel, The New Era of Shopping, and Lemrock all point toward this thesis.
AI Shopping Assistants are also gaining momentum, especially by capital. They raised $31.0M in 2024, $118.2M in 2025, and $35.98M so far in 2026. The category continues to attract larger checks because shopping assistants sit close to consumer intent.
We cover this subcategory shift in more detail in our deeper analysis of the AI shopping market, including how assistants, merchandising tools, recommendations, product search, advice engines, and decision support are moving in different directions.
Which AI shopping subcategories are losing momentum?
AI Product Search is the clearest subcategory losing momentum in the AI shopping market, at least in financing terms. Product search remains strategically important, but disclosed startup funding has shifted away from search as a standalone category.
In 2024, AI Product Search was the dominant capital category. It raised $81.5M across 3 deals, or 67.6% of all capital. Daydream's $50M seed and Constructor's $25M Series B made product search the center of gravity.
By 2025, AI Product Search fell sharply. It raised only $11.5M across 3 deals, or 4.6% of capital. So far in 2026, AI Product Search has no qualifying disclosed round through May.
The interpretation is not that search stopped mattering. The interpretation is that standalone AI Product Search is being absorbed into broader agentic commerce, shopping assistant, merchandising, and recommendation narratives.
Commerce Decision Support also has no 2026 year-to-date activity after appearing in 2025 with Channel3's $6M seed. Product Advice Engines remain underdeveloped, with Fit Collective in 2025 and Consio AI in 2026, but not enough activity to prove a durable funding wave.
This chart, featured in our AI shopping market deck, shows why Constructor is winning in AI shopping
Which regions are gaining momentum in AI shopping funding?
Europe is gaining the most momentum by deal count, while North America is gaining and retaining the most momentum by capital. The AI shopping market is becoming more geographically active, but the capital center of gravity remains North America.
The clearest recent signal is Europe's rise in deal count. So far in 2026, Europe has 4 of 8 deals, equal to North America's 4 deals. That is a meaningful change from 2024, when Europe had only 2 of 7 deals, and from full-year 2025, when Europe had 6 of 20 deals.
European activity is especially visible in AI Merchandising Tools and agentic-commerce infrastructure. Cernel, The New Era of Shopping, Lemrock, and Zellor show that European founders are attacking the merchant-side bottleneck around catalog visibility, agent readiness, and AI-mediated discovery.
North America remains the dominant capital region. It captured 91.1% of capital in 2024, 70.3% in 2025, and 81.8% so far in 2026. The largest recent checks, including Phia's $35M Series A, Spangle AI's $15M Series A, and Limy's $10M seed, are North American.
For ongoing regional tracking across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East, see our market report covering AI shopping regions. It follows both where companies are founded and where large checks are being written.
Which regions are losing momentum in AI shopping funding?
Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East are losing near-term momentum in the AI shopping market when measured against their 2025 activity. The current-year evidence is still early, but the absence of non-North America and non-Europe deals through May 2026 is meaningful.
Full-year 2025 showed early geographic broadening. Asia-Pacific had 2 deals, Latin America had 1 deal, and the Middle East had 1 deal. The Middle East had qeen.ai's $10M seed, Latin America had Vambe's $14M Series A, and Asia-Pacific had two Shoppin' rounds totaling $4.0M.
So far in 2026, that spread has not continued. All qualifying disclosed deals are in North America or Europe. Asia-Pacific, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa each have zero qualifying deals and zero disclosed capital in the year-to-date 2026 window.
Europe is not losing deal momentum, but it is losing the capital-weighted contest. Europe has 50.0% of year-to-date 2026 deals but only 18.2% of capital, which means the region is producing companies without producing many large checks.
The strongest conclusion is that regional momentum outside North America and Europe is fragile. The AI shopping market had promising international proof points in 2025, but 2026 so far has narrowed back to a North America-Europe market.
Is AI shopping becoming more global or regionally concentrated?
The AI shopping market became more global in 2025, but the year-to-date 2026 signal points back toward regional concentration. The best interpretation is that globalization is real but fragile.
In 2024, the AI shopping market was essentially North America and Europe only. North America captured 91.1% of capital and 71.4% of deals, while Europe captured the rest. In 2025, the market expanded to North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East.
The current-year evidence is more concentrated. So far in 2026, all deals and all capital are in North America and Europe. North America has 50.0% of deals and 81.8% of capital. Europe has 50.0% of deals and 18.2% of capital.
The reason the two comparisons disagree is likely a mix of small sample size, reporting timing, and capital concentration. But the capital concentration is still meaningful because North America's larger checks make it the capital center even when Europe matches it in deal count.
The practical takeaway is that the AI shopping market is becoming global by concept adoption, but not yet by financing depth. Full-year 2025 proved that AI shopping is not a U.S.-only market, while 2026 so far shows that serious capital remains regionally concentrated.
This chart, featured in our AI shopping market deck, shows how personalized commerce has driven growth in the AI shopping market over time
Is AI shopping capital moving toward proven winners or new opportunities?
AI shopping capital is moving toward both proven winners and new opportunities, but the balance has shifted in 2026 toward proven winners in dollar terms. New opportunities still dominate by deal count, while more validated companies dominate capital.
So far in 2026, first financings represent 62.5% of deals. That means investors are still funding new opportunities in voice-based product advice, AI-agent catalog visibility, brand-side merchandising infrastructure, and video-shopping assistants.
However, first financings represent only 29.3% of year-to-date 2026 capital. Follow-on rounds absorb about 70.7% of capital despite being fewer in number. Phia's $35M Series A and Spangle AI's $15M Series A are the clearest examples.
The full-year 2025 comparison was more balanced. First financings represented 65.0% of deals and 52.1% of capital, which means 2025 was open to new opportunities by both count and dollars.
Our full market view on AI shopping follow-on activity tracks how the market separates new experiments from companies that are beginning to attract larger validation rounds.
Is the AI shopping market becoming winner-takes-most?
The AI shopping market is becoming more concentrated, but it is not yet winner-takes-most. The better phrase is winner-takes-more: a few companies capture a large share of capital, while the market still funds many competing wedges.
Concentration is obvious in every period. In 2024, the largest deal captured 41.5% of capital and the top three captured 78.8%. In 2025, concentration eased, with the largest deal at 23.8% and the top three at 50.1%. So far in 2026, concentration has increased again, with the largest deal at 45.2% and the top three at 77.5%.
The bottom-half share supports the same point. The bottom 50% of deals captured 14.6% of capital in 2024, 16.3% in 2025, and 13.4% so far in 2026. Many funded companies are option-value bets, while a few companies receive most of the conviction capital.
But winner-takes-most would imply that one company, one category, or one architecture is clearly absorbing the market. That is not happening yet. AI Shopping Assistants, AI Merchandising Tools, and AI Recommendations all attract meaningful capital.
The AI shopping market is capital-concentrated but not strategically settled. Investors have not yet chosen whether the winning architecture will be a consumer assistant, merchant-side visibility layer, product-data infrastructure layer, recommendation engine, shopping search destination, or a combination of these.
Is the next wave of AI shopping winners becoming visible?
Yes, the next wave of AI shopping winners is becoming visible, but it is visible by category pattern more than by definitive company outcomes. The strongest emerging winners are likely to come from consumer shopping agents, AI-agent merchandising infrastructure, and conversion-linked recommendation systems.
The consumer-agent side is visible through companies such as Phia, Gensmo, Doji, Alta, and Daydream. These companies receive attention because they sit close to consumer shopping intent. Phia's $35M Series A in 2026, Gensmo's $60M seed in 2025, and Daydream's $50M seed in 2024 show that investors will underwrite large outcomes when a company might own the consumer interface.
The infrastructure side is becoming even more clearly defined. AI Merchandising Tools had no capital in 2024, then raised $78.6M in 2025 and $23.1M so far in 2026. Companies such as FERMÀT, Peec AI, Limy, Cernel, Lemrock, The New Era of Shopping, Ranketta, New Gen, and Channel3 point toward a common thesis: merchants need to be visible, trusted, ranked, interpretable, and purchasable inside AI-agent environments.
The recommendation layer is also becoming more credible. Shaped in 2024, Spangle AI in 2025 and 2026, Envive AI in 2025, and Albatross AI in 2025 suggest that recommendations are evolving from static personalization widgets into real-time, agentic decisioning systems.
For more context on the new cohort of AI shopping companies and the signals that separate durable companies from generic AI wrappers, see our AI shopping market report.
As this chart shows, and as featured in our AI shopping market deck, search interest in AI shopping has grown significantly
Is the AI shopping funding landscape fragmenting or consolidating?
The AI shopping funding landscape is fragmenting by company count, category breadth, and investor participation, while consolidating by capital concentration around a few large rounds. The market is structurally fragmented but financially selective.
Fragmentation is clear in the category mix. In 2024, only AI Product Search, AI Shopping Assistants, and AI Recommendations received funding. In 2025, funding spread across AI Shopping Assistants, AI Merchandising Tools, AI Recommendations, AI Product Search, Commerce Decision Support, and Product Advice Engines.
So far in 2026, capital has gone to AI Shopping Assistants, AI Merchandising Tools, AI Recommendations, and Product Advice Engines. The AI shopping market is no longer just search and assistants; it now includes brand visibility, agentic merchandising, product-data infrastructure, voice advice, fit, resale-aware shopping, and decision support.
Investor participation is also fragmented. The number of disclosed investors grew from 22 in 2024 to approximately 63 in 2025, and 19 disclosed investors have already participated through May 2026. Yet repeat investor activity remains minimal.
Where consolidation is happening, it is at the top of the capital stack. The top three year-to-date 2026 deals capture 77.5% of capital, which means many companies are getting funded but a small number are receiving most of the dollars.
Where is investor attention shifting in AI shopping?
Investor attention in the AI shopping market is shifting away from standalone product search and toward agentic commerce infrastructure, AI merchandising visibility, consumer shopping assistants, and conversion-linked recommendation systems. The deepest shift is from helping shoppers search to controlling how AI agents and consumers decide what to buy.
In 2024, investor attention was heavily concentrated in AI Product Search. Product Search captured 67.6% of capital, driven by Daydream, Constructor, and Miros. The core idea was that AI could improve search, discovery, and personalized product retrieval.
In 2025, attention shifted toward AI Shopping Assistants and AI Merchandising Tools. Shopping Assistants captured 47.0% of capital, while Merchandising Tools captured 31.2%. Product Search fell to only 4.6% of capital.
So far in 2026, the shift has become even clearer. AI Merchandising Tools account for 50.0% of deals, while AI Shopping Assistants account for 46.5% of capital. Product Search has no qualifying disclosed deal through May.
The strongest conclusion is that investor attention is shifting to the new control layer of commerce. For real-time tracking of how investor attention is moving across assistants, agents, merchandising tools, recommendations, product search, and decision-support infrastructure, see our full AI shopping market report.
All the funding deals in the AI shopping market from 2024 to Apr 2026
The table below lists every disclosed funding round in the supplied AI shopping and agentic commerce dataset from March 2024 to April 2026. It includes companies across AI shopping assistants, AI product search, AI recommendations, AI merchandising tools, product advice engines, and commerce decision support.
Each row shows the company, the fundraising date, what the company does, its category, the funding stage, the round size, the region, whether it was a first financing or a follow-on, the tier-1 investor if any, and the announcement source. For the broader investability view, see our market report.
| Company | Date | What they do | Category | Stage | Deal size | Region | First/Follow-on | Tier 1 investor(s) | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zellor | Apr 2026 | AI shopping assistant and video-shopping concierge for ecommerce brands, initially focused on beauty and lifestyle brands. | AI Shopping Assistants | Seed | $0.983M | Europe | First financing | None | Silicon Republic |
| Lemrock | Mar 2026 | Agentic-commerce middleware connecting retailers’ product catalogs to AI platforms such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity, including pricing, availability, transactions, and performance tracking. | AI Merchandising Tools | Seed | $7M | Europe | First financing | None | EU-Startups |
| The New Era of Shopping | Feb 2026 | Agentic-commerce platform helping brands make product catalogs discoverable, trusted, and purchasable inside AI answer engines such as ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity. | AI Merchandising Tools | Seed | $1.4M | Europe | First financing | None disclosed | The New Era of Shopping |
| Cernel | Feb 2026 | AI-driven product-data infrastructure for ecommerce companies, intended to make product catalogs usable and discoverable in agentic commerce. | AI Merchandising Tools | Seed | $4.7M | Europe | Follow-on | None | Cernel |
| Limy | Jan 2026 | Platform helping brands optimize visibility, influence, attribution, and conversions when AI agents discover and recommend products. | AI Merchandising Tools | Seed | $10M | North America | First financing | a16z speedrun | Limy |
| Phia | Jan 2026 | Consumer AI shopping agent that compares products and prices, supports resale-aware shopping, and mediates between brands and consumers. | AI Shopping Assistants | Series A | $35M | North America | Follow-on | Khosla Ventures; Kleiner Perkins | FinancialContent |
| Consio AI | Jan 2026 | AI voice agents for ecommerce brands, focused on phone-based product advice and high-ticket purchase conversion. | Product Advice Engines | Seed | $3.3M | North America | First financing | None | Retail Technology Innovation Hub |
| Spangle AI | Jan 2026 | Agentic infrastructure connecting AI-driven product discovery to real-time online conversion; founded by former Amazon executives. | AI Recommendations | Series A | $15M | North America | Follow-on | None under strict global-tier definition | Business Wire |
| Channel3 | Dec 2025 | Product database and infrastructure layer making products discoverable and actionable by AI shopping agents. | Commerce Decision Support | Seed | $6M | North America | First financing | Matrix Partners | Channel3 |
| Vambe | Dec 2025 | AI-powered conversational commerce platform automating sales operations and customer support for B2C companies in Latin America. | AI Shopping Assistants | Series A | $14M | Latin America | Follow-on | None | SiliconANGLE |
| Ranketta | Nov 2025 | AI visibility platform helping e-commerce brands understand and improve product presence in AI search and AI Shopping results. | AI Merchandising Tools | Unknown | $1.1M | Europe | First financing | None | EU-Startups |
| Onton | Nov 2025 | AI e-commerce search and decision-support platform designed to make product choice more informed and less noisy. | AI Product Search | Seed | $7.5M | North America | First financing | None | PYMNTS |
| Albatross AI | Nov 2025 | Real-time product and content discovery platform that adapts recommendations as users interact. | AI Recommendations | Seed | $12.5M | Europe | Follow-on | None | Yahoo Finance |
| Peec AI | Nov 2025 | AI search marketing and visibility platform for brands across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, and related AI search surfaces. | AI Merchandising Tools | Series A | $21M | Europe | Follow-on | None | Peec AI |
| Shoppin’ | Nov 2025 | AI-powered multimodal fashion search engine using images, text prompts, product descriptions, and image-text combinations. | AI Product Search | Seed | $3M | Asia-Pacific | Follow-on | None | Inc42 |
| Fit Collective | Nov 2025 | AI sizing and fit platform helping fashion brands improve garment fit and reduce returns. | Product Advice Engines | Unknown | $3.8M | Europe | First financing | None | Tech.eu |
| Phia | Sep 2025 | AI-powered shopping tool and browser extension for price comparison, resale value, price drops, and fashion shopping decisions. | AI Shopping Assistants | Seed | $8M | North America | First financing | Kleiner Perkins | People |
| Envive AI | Sep 2025 | Intelligence layer for digital commerce using self-improving agents across discovery, consideration, purchase, and retention. | AI Recommendations | Series A | $15M | North America | Follow-on | None | Envive AI |
| Peec AI | Jul 2025 | AI search visibility and analytics platform helping brands understand and improve their presence in AI search and shopping discovery. | AI Merchandising Tools | Seed | $7M | Europe | First financing | 20VC | Tech Funding News |
| Gensmo | Jul 2025 | AI fashion agent for hyper-personalized recommendations, virtual try-ons, and visual inspiration tied to commerce. | AI Shopping Assistants | Seed | $60M | North America | First financing | None disclosed | PR Newswire |
| Alta | Jun 2025 | AI personal stylist and shopping app that recommends outfits, builds virtual closets, and supports virtual try-on. | AI Shopping Assistants | Seed | $11M | North America | First financing | Menlo Ventures | PR Newswire |
| FERMÀT | Jun 2025 | AI-native commerce platform generating personalized shopping journeys for human and agentic shoppers. | AI Merchandising Tools | Series B | $45M | North America | Follow-on | Greylock; Bain Capital Ventures | PR Newswire |
| New Generation / New Gen | May 2025 | AI-native storefronts and conversational shopping pages for brands and AI shopping agents. | AI Merchandising Tools | Seed | $4.5M | North America | First financing | None disclosed | PR Newswire |
| Doji | May 2025 | AI-powered avatar and virtual try-on app for online fashion shopping. | AI Shopping Assistants | Seed | $14M | North America | First financing | Thrive Capital | TechCrunch |
| Spangle AI | Mar 2025 | Agentic AI and ProductGPT platform that personalizes post-click commerce journeys for retailers. | AI Recommendations | Seed | $6M | North America | First financing | Madrona Ventures | Business Wire |
| Merx | Mar 2025 | AI-powered conversational commerce platform connecting brands with consumers via WhatsApp and similar messaging channels. | AI Shopping Assistants | Unknown | $1.2M | Europe | First financing | None | EU-Startups |
| qeen.ai | Feb 2025 | Autonomous AI agents for e-commerce businesses, including content, marketing, and conversational sales workflows. | AI Shopping Assistants | Seed | $10M | Middle East | Follow-on | Prosus Ventures | Zawya |
| Shoppin’ | Jan 2025 | AI-powered fashion search engine that lets consumers discover apparel through prompts, product descriptions, images, and “vibes.” | AI Product Search | Unknown | $1M | Asia-Pacific | First financing | None | Economic Times |
| Miros | Nov 2024 | Visual AI ecommerce search solution that helps online shoppers find products using visual intent rather than only text keywords. | AI Product Search | Unknown | $6.5M | Europe | Follow-on | EBRD Venture Capital | Miros |
| Connectly | Sep 2024 | AI-powered conversational commerce platform using proprietary AI models to help retailers personalize two-way customer messages and drive digital commerce engagement. | AI Shopping Assistants | Series B | $20M | North America | Follow-on | Alibaba; Unusual Ventures | Business Wire |
| Shaped | Jul 2024 | AI recommendation and search platform for marketplaces, ecommerce, and content companies, using customer data and LLMs to create personalized user experiences. | AI Recommendations | Series A | $8M | North America | Follow-on | Madrona Ventures; Y Combinator | Business Wire |
| Daydream | Jun 2024 | AI-powered fashion search and discovery platform using generative AI, machine learning, and computer vision to return personalized shopping results from participating brands. | AI Product Search | Seed | $50M | North America | First financing | Forerunner Ventures; Index Ventures; GV | PR Newswire |
| Constructor | Jun 2024 | AI-powered product discovery and ecommerce search platform for enterprise retailers, including search, recommendations, and personalized discovery. | AI Product Search | Series B | $25M | North America | Follow-on | Sapphire Ventures | PR Newswire |
| Big Sur AI | Mar 2024 | AI sales agent for ecommerce merchants, designed to improve assisted shopping and product discovery on merchant websites. | AI Shopping Assistants | Seed | $6.9M | North America | First financing | Lightspeed Venture Partners | Business Wire |
| Frontnow | Mar 2024 | AI SaaS for ecommerce, including a virtual shopping assistant/advisor that helps online shoppers navigate, receive personalized guidance, and make informed purchase decisions. | AI Shopping Assistants | Seed | $4.1M | Europe | Follow-on | None | Peak |
INSIGHTS
The insights below come from reviewing every disclosed equity round in the AI shopping market between January 2024 and May 2026, including full-year 2024, full-year 2025, and year-to-date 2026 funding activity.
- The AI shopping market is not growing because every company is raising larger checks. It is growing because more companies are entering and a few companies are absorbing much larger conviction rounds. That distinction matters because broad formation plus concentrated conviction is an early market sorting process, not a mature boom.
- The single most important structural change from 2024 to 2026 is the rise of AI Merchandising Tools. A category with zero 2024 funding became 25.0% of 2025 deal count and 50.0% of year-to-date 2026 deal count. That suggests investors now care deeply about how brands become visible and transactible inside AI-mediated shopping journeys.
- AI Product Search has not disappeared as a function, but it has weakened as a standalone funding story. Search was the dominant 2024 capital category, then fell sharply in 2025 and has no qualifying year-to-date 2026 round. The function is being absorbed into assistants, agentic merchandising, and recommendation systems.
- Consumer-facing AI shopping assistants still command the largest checks when investors believe the company can own consumer intent. Phia, Gensmo, Daydream, Doji, Alta, and similar companies show that the market will pay for a plausible consumer interface. The harder question is whether those interfaces can repeat behavior often enough to become durable distribution channels.
- The market's median round is a better signal than the headline total. In 2026 so far, the median round is $5.85M while the average is $9.67M, which means the average is being pulled upward by a small number of larger rounds. For the typical AI shopping company, the financing environment is still seed-scale.
- Series A validation is becoming more important than late-stage scaling. The 2026 market has no Series B+ capital, but Series A accounts for nearly two-thirds of dollars. The practical signal is not that AI shopping has matured into growth equity; it is that a few seed-stage stories are now raising validation rounds.
- First financings remain common, but the largest dollars are moving to follow-ons. That means the market is still open to new entrants while becoming more demanding about who receives conviction capital. This is exactly what happens when a category moves from open experimentation toward early selection.
- Europe is gaining company-formation momentum but not capital depth. It has half of year-to-date 2026 deals and less than one-fifth of capital. European founders are active, especially in infrastructure, but the largest checks still cluster in North America.
- North America remains the capital center even when it does not dominate deal count. Its year-to-date 2026 average deal size is $15.83M versus Europe's $3.52M. That gap matters because model work, integrations, go-to-market, and enterprise partnerships can all become capital-intensive.
- The temporary globalization seen in 2025 has not yet repeated in 2026. Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East all produced proof points in 2025, but none has a qualifying disclosed deal through May 2026. The market is globally relevant, but current financing depth is still concentrated in North America and Europe.
- Investor participation is broad but not specialized. The number of disclosed investors expanded sharply from 2024 to 2025, yet repeat activity remains almost nonexistent. That means many investors are interested enough to test the market, but few have built a repeatable AI shopping thesis.
- Top investors validate companies, not the whole category. Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, a16z speedrun, Greylock, Bain Capital Ventures, Menlo, Thrive, Prosus, and others have appeared in notable deals, but elite participation is episodic. A marquee investor on one round should be read as company-specific conviction, not proof of category-wide maturity.
- The strongest investable control points are consumer intent, merchant visibility, and conversion decisioning. Companies that touch one of those points have a clearer funding argument than companies that merely add AI to an existing ecommerce workflow. The market is funding places where shopping decisions are shaped.
- AI-agent visibility has become a new infrastructure thesis. Limy, Cernel, Lemrock, The New Era of Shopping, Peec AI, Ranketta, and Channel3 all point toward the same idea: if AI agents influence product discovery, merchants need to make their products legible to those systems.
- The bottom half of deals captures a small share of capital, which means many funded companies are still option-value bets. In year-to-date 2026, the bottom 50% of deals accounts for only 13.4% of dollars. Investors are spreading small checks across experiments while reserving large checks for a few perceived leaders.
- The AI shopping market is winner-takes-more, not winner-takes-most. Concentration is high, but the largest company changes by period, and multiple architectures still receive funding. The market has not yet decided whether the dominant model will be a shopping assistant, an agentic-commerce infrastructure layer, a recommendation engine, or a new search destination.
- Product Advice Engines remain underfunded relative to their closeness to conversion. Consio AI is the only qualifying year-to-date 2026 example, and Fit Collective was the lone 2025 example. Consultative product advice may matter commercially, but it has not yet become a dense venture category.
- The clean diligence rule for future AI shopping deals is to ask what bottleneck the company controls. If the answer is product data, agent visibility, consumer distribution, recommendation decisioning, or purchase conversion, the company fits the direction of funding. If the answer is only a generic AI wrapper, the signal is much weaker.
This chart, featured in our AI shopping market deck, shows how AI shopping assistant technology has evolved over time
OUR METHODOLOGY TO BUILD THIS TRACKER
We built this AI shopping funding tracker by reviewing every publicly disclosed equity round raised by pure-play AI shopping companies between January 2024 and May 2026. A company counts as pure-play when more than 80% of its activity is dedicated to AI software that directly improves how consumers discover, evaluate, compare, select, or receive product recommendations in digital commerce journeys.
We applied four filters to build the dataset. First, we only included equity rounds, so grants, debt, structured financings, acquisitions, SPAC transactions, and business combinations are excluded. Second, we only counted disclosed rounds of $300K or more. Third, we only kept pure-play AI shopping companies, which means we excluded generic retail operations, payments, fraud, logistics, customer-service, content-generation, and broad AI infrastructure companies unless the product clearly centered on shopping discovery, recommendation, merchandising, advice, or commerce decision support. And fourth, every entry had to be confirmed by a direct company announcement, press release, tier-1 media report, specialized industry source, or relevant regional publication.
We also excluded undisclosed-amount rounds because including them would distort dollar-based metrics such as average round size, median round size, capital share, and concentration ratios. The final dataset contains 35 disclosed deals across 33 unique companies, covering full-year 2024, full-year 2025, and year-to-date 2026 through May. Privately raised rounds that were never publicly announced are necessarily missing, which is a known limitation of any public-only AI shopping funding tracker.
Related blog posts
- What is new in the AI shopping market?
- The most recent news in the AI shopping market
- What is the real size of the AI shopping market?
- The most recent funding news in the AI shopping market
- How funding activity has evolved in the AI shopping market
- The startups that have raised the most funding in the AI shopping market
