Vantage Discovery recently raised $16 million in a Series A funding round, which included participation from Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, who is now a board member. This follows a $4 million seed funding round last year. The company is also exploring the area of "merchandise tooling", aiming to add an AI touch to the way online stores or search engines rank results.
Key takeaways:
- Lance Riedel and Nigel Daley, former Pinterest employees, started Vantage Discovery in 2023 to offer a personalized search engine to brands that uses large language models and image identification AI.
- The search engine learns a user's preferences based on their interactions and can generate personalized shopping recommendations, even using data from a user's Pinterest profile.
- Vantage Discovery has attracted investment from Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and others, raising $16 million in a Series A round and $4 million in seed funding.
- The company is also exploring "merchandise tooling", aiming to use AI to influence how online stores or search engines rank results.