Spangle AI, a startup founded by former Amazon executives, has secured $15 million in Series A funding to enhance real-time, personalized shopping experiences for online retailers.
Spangle AI, a Seattle-based startup focused on revolutionizing online retail, has successfully raised $15 million in a Series A funding round. The investment was led by NewRoad Capital Partners, with participation from Madrona, DNX Ventures, Streamlined Ventures, and several angel investors. Following this funding, Spangle AI is now valued at $100 million.
Founded in 2022 by a team of former Amazon executives, Spangle AI aims to create customized shopping experiences in real-time. The platform can generate tailored storefronts for individual customers by analyzing traffic from various sources, including social media, AI search tools, and autonomous shopping agents.
Spangle AI is addressing a significant shift in e-commerce, moving away from traditional methods that cater primarily to customers visiting a brand’s website directly. “The problem is that websites are not designed to continue a journey that originated somewhere else,” said Spangle CEO Maju Kuruvilla, who previously served as a vice president at Amazon, where he was involved in Prime logistics and fulfillment.
Fei Wang, Spangle’s CTO and a former Principal Engineer at Amazon, emphasized the limitations of existing e-commerce systems. “Having built unified AI systems at Amazon, including Alexa and customer service workflow automation at massive scale, we saw what’s broken in traditional e-commerce stacks: fragmented data, slow feedback cycles, and no intelligence layer tying it together,” Wang explained.
Unlike conventional approaches that rely heavily on user identity or historical data, Spangle’s system focuses on understanding customer intent and engagement. It is trained on a retailer’s catalog, brand guidelines, and performance metrics, allowing for a more contextual shopping experience.
Spangle AI’s innovative approach has attracted the attention of major fashion and retail brands, including EVOLVE, Steve Madden, and Alexander Wang. These partnerships have reportedly resulted in conversion rate increases of up to 50% and significant improvements in return on ad spend. In its first nine months, Spangle AI has secured nine enterprise customers, although the company has not disclosed specific revenue figures.
Kuruvilla noted that while e-commerce retailers excel at attracting customer interest, the challenge lies in converting that interest into sales. “Conversion from all this traffic that’s discovered outside is a huge problem for all these brands,” he stated.
Prior to founding Spangle AI, Kuruvilla was the CEO and CTO at Bolt, a controversial one-click checkout e-commerce startup that achieved a valuation of $11 billion. His extensive background also includes roles at Microsoft, Honeywell, and Milliman.
Fei Wang, who co-founded Spangle AI, previously served as CTO at Saks OFF 5TH, a subsidiary of Saks Fifth Avenue. He spent nearly 12 years at Amazon as an engineer. Yufeng Gou, the head of engineering at Spangle, also has a background at Saks OFF 5TH. Karen Moon, the company’s COO, is a seasoned investor and former CEO at Trendalytics.
As the e-commerce landscape continues to evolve, Spangle AI is positioning itself at the forefront of agentic commerce, leveraging its founders’ extensive experience to create a more seamless and personalized shopping experience for consumers.
The information in this article is based on reports from The American Bazaar.