Zippin, San Francisco, closed $12 million in Series A funding led by Evolv Ventures, a Chicago-based venture fund created by Kraft Heinz, Pittsburgh, Pa.
Zippin uses a combination of computer vision, artificial intelligence (AI) and sensor fusion technology to offer a checkout-free shopping experience.
Other investors in the round include SAP.iO, San Francisco; Scrum Ventures, San Francisco; Arca Continental, Mexico; Nomura Research Institute, Japan; and NTT DOCOMO Ventures, Japan.
The Series A funding will help Zippin accelerate new store launches in the coming months, with plans to open new stores for grocery and convenience chains and more.
“When we launched the Zippin platform for retailers in 2018, we removed friction from the checkout process. With the Zippin Cube, we are aiming to remove friction from bringing that experience to retail stores,” says Krishna Motukuri, chief executive officer of Zippin. “We obsess about retail operations and physical infrastructure just as much as we obsess about AI and computer vision. That’s why we have more operational public stores than most other startups in the checkout-free space.”
For global CPG companies like Kraft Heinz, the emergence of this new retail paradigm presents an opportunity to get closer to the end consumer, provide a superior shopping experience and build a better, data-driven understanding of shopper behaviors and preferences.
“We’re excited to join Zippin’s journey as these new formats become critical to the transition currently underway in retail,” says Smriti Jayaraman, principal at Evolv Ventures. “Zippin’s technology also offers CPG brands, which have previously been at arm’s length from the point of sale, a unique set of opportunities to participate in the customer journey.”
This round brings the company’s total funding to $15 million, and will allow Zippin to further invest in product innovation, grow its technical team and expand sales and partnership efforts.
