Duvo raises $15M to give retailers AI staff that cuts manual work by 40%

Duvo, an AI-native automation platform that gives retail teams an AI workforce for day-to-day operations, has raised $15 million in seed funding. The round was led by Index Ventures, backers of Figma, Revolut and Wiz. Credo Ventures, Northzone and Puzzle Ventures also participated, along with angels Roy Reznik (co-founder of Wiz), David Singleton (former CTO of Stripe) and Kieran Flanagan (former CMO of Zapier).

Retail, e-commerce and fast-moving consumer goods are complex sectors, with thin margins and large supplier networks. Many operations still rely on staff manually transferring data between multiple tools and third-party portals, often using systems that are more than a decade old and not designed to work together.

Traditional enterprise software projects can be expensive, require retailers to replace core systems, or involve building complex integrations that take months or years and may not succeed. As competition increases and margins come under pressure, retailers that continue to depend on these slow and fragile processes may be at a disadvantage compared with those that modernise more quickly.

Addressing this need for faster, lower-risk change, Duvo is designed primarily for business users rather than technical teams. Commercial, supply chain and finance teams can create and refine assistants themselves, without relying on large IT projects or specialised engineering support.

The platform ships with ready-made AI assistants for tasks such as weekly margin reviews, activating promotions and price changes, reconciling supplier invoices, assortment optimisation and vendor onboarding. Retailers typically begin with a single team or country, demonstrate value within a few weeks, and then roll out the same automations to additional markets without a large-scale IT project.

Working with Duvo’s agents is intended to resemble delegating tasks to trusted team members. The agents handle operational work that can slow retail teams down, executing complete tasks and processes across existing systems, from older portals to modern tools, and can also place phone calls when needed.

In contrast to general-purpose assistants, Duvo is designed to run retail operations rather than simply assist from a chat interface. Its agents act directly within retailers’ systems to carry out tasks autonomously, supported by governance features, audit trails, security controls and user management. All actions are visible: managers can review what was done and when, set approval workflows once, and rely on assistants to surface only exceptions or decisions that require human input.

The investment will support hiring and product expansion as the company scales across the retail sector, with plans to move into other verticals where operational complexity calls for resilient automation.