Pixyle AI, an Amsterdam-based visual AI startup for e-commerce, has secured €1M in a Seed funding round from South Central Ventures. The Dutch company will use the funds to expand our geographic reach further, enhance the product offering, and move into new verticals.
According to Pixyle, search engines and site searches are failing shoppers owing to inconsistent, incomplete, and inaccurate data quality linked to products. According to the research, 94% of searches deliver irrelevant results, and 72% of sites fall short of search expectations.
Svetlana Kordumova, founder and CEO of Pixyle AI, comments, “In search, understanding customers’ shopping intent is vital. We are laser-focused on this, using neural networks that train Pixyle’s AI algorithms to see and interpret images exactly how humans would. For example, in e-commerce, when site visitors are looking for a specific product to buy and type “short summer dress with flower print in purple and pink” for these kinds of dresses to be shown to the customers in the catalogue, they need to be tagged with length “short,” occasion “summer,” with the “floral” pattern, and “purple” and “pink” colours. It starts with building the right taxonomy. Having the right metadata associated with product images helps retailers capture everyday popular search queries and long-tail searches. We’re trying to make online shopping as frictionless as possible and hopefully more fun and enjoyable by letting people easily find what they are looking for.”
Building visual AI technology
Founded by Svetlana Kordumova, a Ph.D. in AI and Computer vision from the University of Amsterdam in 2018, Pixyle AI aims to build the world’s most accurate visual AI technology.
Pixyle AI helps fashion retailers with image recognition solutions, enabling them to deliver a better online shopping experience, boost e-commerce sales, and improve efficiency in catalogue management with smart product data entry.
The company’s solution finds the location of fashion items in images, determines the category(i.e, dress, sneaker, etc.), and classifies attributes (i.e. colour, pattern, etc.) in the language shoppers use.
Consequently, it enhances the product data and improves the relevancy in search results for product discoverability, leading to higher conversion rates, claims the company.
The Amsterdam-based startup says the tags generated by Pixyle AI can be easily implemented into a retailer’s existing e-commerce stack.
Currently, the company works with brands and retailers globally, including Depop (UK), Otrium (Netherlands), and Miinto (Denmark).
Pixyle AI works similarly to Dublin-based EVERYANGLE, a computer vision startup focused on helping retailers, hospitality venues, and convenience service stations better understand their customers in-store, reduce loss and optimise operations through computer vision technology.
Since 2019, the platform has tagged over 250M images, improving the relevance and accuracy of product attributes with 95% accuracy and increasing conversions by 10% on average.
Jan Kobler, the Managing Partner at South Central Ventures, says, “E-commerce has gone from strength to strength in recent years with several innovations to help the channel become second nature for consumers. A pivotal part of engaging online shoppers is product search, being able to find what you want easily and quickly. However, search has been hugely underserved and remains an unmet need for retailers and shoppers. Pixyle AI is laser-focused on this opportunity and is already moving the dial with more sales for retailers. They have built a robust tech stack, which has been tried and tested in the market and is ready to scale. We look forward to working with the founders and helping them grow their business in years to come.”
