2022-08-09 Shopic, a rival to Amazon Dash smart cart gulps $35M to fuel global expansion A smart grocery shopping cart startup, Shopic headquartered in Tel Aviv, has raised $35 million in Series B funding. The financing round was led by Qualcomm Ventures (that backed Nothing and Zuddl) along with participation from Vintage Investment Partners and Clal Insurance, and Shopic's existing investors IBI Tech Fund, Tal Ventures, Claridge Israel, and Shufersal. Eyes global expansion With this round, the total funding raised by Shopic accounts for $56 million. The fresh funds will be used to expand its penetration to global markets. Already, Shopic has been deployed by several grocers and some of the world's largest supermarket chains in Europe, the Americas, and Israel. "Today's consumers are used to friction-free online shopping experiences, but retailers struggle to deliver them for in-store shoppers," said Raz Golan, CEO and co-founder of Shopic. "As the only solution that uses full computer vision rather than barcode scanning, Shopic empowers retailers to not only meet customer expectations but to delight them". Merav Weinryb, VP of Qualcomm Israel Ltd. and Managing Director of Qualcomm Ventures Israel and Europe, said: "We support Shopic's vision of hybrid retail, where the best of online shopping and physical store experiences merge. Shopic's smart cart, which is a compelling and pragmatic smart retail solution is helping enable this future. We were very impressed with the performance of Shopic's cart in live supermarkets, demonstrating the potential of AI to transform everyday experiences for everyone". Rival to Amazon's smart cart Founded in 2015 by Eran Kravitz and Raz Golan in Tel Aviv, Shopic is a smart grocery shopping cart company that is a rival to the Amazon Dash smart cart. It offers an AI-powered clip-on device that transforms shopping carts into smart carts. With computer vision algorithms, Shopic identifies items placed in the cart in real-time, while displaying to shoppers product promotions and discounts on related products. The system acts as a self-service checkout interface and saves customers the time and hassle of standing in line to pay. Shopic's clip-on device can be used with any shopping cart, offering a highly cost-effective implementation path for grocers. Shoppers can remove the device when their transactions are complete and use the cart to take their groceries out to the parking lot, completing a truly frictionless shelf-to-car shopping journey. Inside the cart, Shopic uses a camera duo that enables its AI-computer vision model to support large catalogues of over 50,000 items, cover edge cases and achieve low latency with limited processing power. The algorithm can even identify products thrown into the cart even when it's in motion or when people put multiple products in their carts simultaneously. In addition to delivering a new retail experience for in-store shoppers, the company provides real-time inventory management and customer behavioural insights for grocers through its analytics dashboard. These reports include aisle heatmaps, promotion monitoring and new product adoption metrics. Back...