Depict.ai, a Stockholm-based AI platform that provides product recommendations to e-commerce stores without needing any transaction data, announced that it has secured $17M (approx €15.2M) in a Series A round of funding led by Tiger Global.
Other investors, including Initialized Capital, EQT Ventures, Y Combinator, and a team of angels, also participated. The funding comes a year after the company raised $2.8M (approx €2.5M) in seed funding led by Initialized Capital.
Fund utilisation
The funding will enable the Swedish company to grow its team and accelerate product development.
Oliver Edholm, Y-combinator alumnus and Depict.ai founder and CEO says, “Up until now, the benefits of AI have been reserved for the e-commerce tech giants, and we’re here to change that. We’re starting by giving every e-commerce store the AI technology they need to deliver world-class product recommendations. Our ambition is to bring retailers all the AI infrastructure they need for product discovery, so they can focus on delighting their customers with great products instead of worrying about technical complexities.”
Depict.ai: What you need to know
Founded by Oliver Edholm and Anton Osika in 2019, Depict.ai has developed AI technology that provides Amazon-quality product recommendations for any e-commerce store.
Depict.ai claims that its solution uses an algorithm that can increase overall e-commerce revenue by 4 to 6 per cent for any store without needing any sales data at all.
The plug-and-play solution utilises deep learning and trains neural networks to understand product images and information to an unprecedented extent.
Investor
Tiger Global Management is an investment firm focused on private and public companies in the internet, software and financial technology sectors.
The VC firm has invested in hundreds of companies across more than 30 countries, and at stages ranging from Series A to pre-and post-IPO.
John Curtius, Partner at Tiger Global, says, “Depict.ai’s AI-based product recommendation platform, is completely novel because it does not require historical sales data, enables online retailers of any size to deliver high-quality recommendations, a key driver of increased revenues. We believe Depict.ai’s technology is poised to be a leader in this space, and we are excited to partner with Oliver and his team as they continue to expand into new markets.
EQT Ventures is a multi-stage VC fund that partners with the “most ambitious and boldest” founders in Europe and the US.
Rania Belkahia, Partner at EQT Ventures, says, “At EQT Ventures we generally observe two trends in e-commerce innovation. Entrepreneurs either build tools to “arm the rebels” or create services for incumbents to keep up with the speed of more nimble players. When meeting with Oliver and his team we immediately bought his vision of providing top-tier product recommendations for the masses. Multiple members on our team have experienced the problem first-hand as founders, the Depict.ai technology is both a direct enabler of revenue growth and a time-saver from a development capacity standpoint.”