Seeking to level the e-commerce recommendation engine playing field, Depict.ai raises $17 million in Tiger Global-led round

Stockholm-based Depict.ai has raised $17 million in a Series A funding round led by Tiger Global. Offering e-commerce merchants an AI-based product recommendation engine that requires no historical sales data, the funding will be used to keep pace with growing customer demand and further develop the product. To date, the startup has raised $19.2 million.

According to a McKinsey report, more than a third of Amazon’s revenues can be attributed to its recommendation engine, a service primarily driven by the massive amounts of data the company has amassed.

With the vast majority of e-commerce merchants lacking not only this catalogue of data, but the technical capabilities to successfully implement it, they’re operating in a game where the deck is already stacked against them.

This is precisely the issue that Depict.ai founders Oliver Edholm (CEO) and Anton Osika (CTO) are aiming to tackle. Employing deep learning technologies, the startups’ technology can understand a retailer’s offer via product image and information recognition and output a highly accurate recommendation service, all without the need for any previous sales data.

“We love working with Depict.ai because of their super-strong AI and no-brainer 5-minute frontend integration. Before Depict.ai, we put great efforts into manually curating our recommendations for our 23,000 products. Now we have zero manual work and a greater conversion rate on our site,” comments Staples Sweden's Magnus Jason.

So accurate is the service, that the startup claims that customers report sales increases by 4 to 6 percent.

“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,” explained 19-year-old Edholm. “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."

Y Combinator alumni Depict.ai’s $17 million Series A round was led by Tiger Global and saw participation from Initialized Capital, EQT Ventures, and naturally, Y Combinator. 

“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," concluded Tiger Global’s John Curtius.