Cosmose AI, the tech startup that understands, predicts and influences how 1 billion people shop offline, has raised €10.8 seed investment. The funding was led by TDJ Pitango and OTB Ventures, to fund Cosmose AI’s international expansion and help it become the global leader in offline behavioural solutions.
Cosmose AI, founded in 2014 as a graduate of the Founders Factory’s accelerator programme, is transforming the offline retail game. By bringing together machine learning and smartphone technology, it hopes to deliver an unprecedented, seamless view of in-store shoppers. Its ecosystem of more than 350,000 stores and 1 billion smartphones is crucial to its ability to understand a shopper location in store with the accuracy of 1.6 meter (as audited by PwC). Cosmose’s unique omnichannel approach levels the playing field for brick-and-mortar retailers against their online-only competitors and lets luxury brands, like LVMH, Richemont, Kering, Estée Lauder and L’Oréal, have precise data on potential customers in order to improve the shopping experience and increase offline conversion by 135% (according to Acxiom).
The AI-driven startup has tripled its revenue in the last 12 months and continues to gather pace in the world’s biggest commerce market: China. With this investment, Cosmose AI will focus on expanding operations to Japan and opening a Paris office to serve European luxury brands targeting the Chinese traveller market – which accounts for 21% of global tourism spending. The company’s experience in dealing with the speed and competition in the Chinese market will help fuel is success in Japan and other international markets.
Miron Mironiuk, CEO and founder of Cosmose AI said, “Machine learning allows us to increase the accuracy of location positioning to 1.6 meters, predict who is likely to visit a certain store and how to provide relevant consumer experience. In China we’ve seen great results from retailers using Cosmose and now we are setting our sights further afield as we take on this new investment.”
Adam Niewinski, Managing Partner at OTB Ventures, added, “Cosmose is a perfect example of our strategy, investing only in companies with globally unique and superior technology that can disrupt legacy markets. Cosmose combines accuracy with simplicity on an unprecedented scale and therefore disrupting marketing and retail.”
In addition to the new investment, Cosmose has also added industry gurus, Ohad Finkelstein and Raymond Zage, to its board. Ohad currently serves as an Advisor to the CEO of Walmart, a board member of OneWeb and co-founded Marker LLC. Raymond Zage, a former CEO of Farallon Capital Asia and member of the boards of Go-Jek and Toshiba, has almost three decades of investing experience in Asia.
“Cosmose is one of the most intriguing companies I know with a highly differentiated platform and an exceptional team. I was very excited to join the board and to help the company deliver on its visionary promise,” said Ohad Finkelstein.
