Big tech companies aren’t just using AI to help you create or curate content – they also want you to use it to shop. OpenAIGoogle and Amazon have invested heavily in AI assistants that research new product categories for you and recommend the right ones for you to buy.
Startups like Perplexity, Daydream and Cherry have also built businesses around AI for product discovery. All of these efforts have resulted in customers using more AI to make purchases. Onton (formerly known as Deft), an AI-powered furniture shopping platform, says it has seen its user base grow from 50,000 monthly active users to over 2 million monthly active users, serving millions of searches and image generations.
Fueled by this growth, the startup announced today that it has raised $7.5 million in a new funding round led by Footwork, with participation from Liquid 2, Parable Ventures and 43, among others. This round brings the startup’s total funding to around $10 million.
Using this funding, the company wants to expand into new categories such as apparel and eventually consumer electronics.
The company rebranded from Deft to Onton earlier this year, citing confusion over the original name and difficulty securing a premium domain.
Zach Hudson, co-founder of Onton, says that while large language models (LLMs) are good at guessing potential intent, they haven’t solved many problems in e-commerce. He added that the startup has noticed that the average time it takes a consumer to make a purchase decision has increased.
For its core technology, the company uses what is called a neuro-symbolic architecture. Hudson said that with this approach, the company can eliminate LLM’s hallucination problems and provide better, logical search results. He added that the startup’s model can also learn information from the real world that might not necessarily be included in a product description.
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“Let’s say you’re looking for pet-friendly furniture. Our tools know that if the item has polyester, it would be more stain and scratch resistant, so it would be more pet-friendly. Our tools learn these things with each search and get smarter at a faster rate,” Hudson said.
He added that often when you search for a product that may be called different things on different websites, you don’t get great results. The company’s AI model takes these scenarios into account when presenting results.
Onton has added different input methods and features to help people with their short and long term decisions. Now you can upload an image or add a prompt to create what you want to achieve with your home or office setup and Onton can find you furniture based on that.
Onton also offers an infinite canvas with image creation where you can add existing images alongside the products you find for ideation. You can also add images of your room and ask the tool to furnish it.
The company believes that instead of sticking to a chat-only approach, these features will give consumers more options to get to what they want, even if they don’t know how to describe it perfectly.
The startup said that with these approaches, it has been able to convert 3-5 times more customers than traditional e-commerce sites, as they can trust the underlying data.
Hudson noted that because of the technology and interface changes he made, it will be easier to release clothing. The company is building its catalog for the category and plans to launch the vertical soon. In this category, it will face competition from companies like Daydream, Aesthetic and Style.
The company has grown from three full-time employees in 2023 to 10 now, with plans to expand the team to 15 by hiring engineers and researchers.
