- London-based Wassist raises $1.1 million pre-seed round led by Playfair to make WhatsApp commerce accessible without engineering teams
- Founder Josh Warwick built the product during weekend hackathons, growing usage from 2,000 to 80,000 customer conversations without paid marketing
- The startup lets brands deploy AI-powered WhatsApp agents that answer questions, recover carts, recommend products, and complete purchases inside chat
For years, businesses have chased customers across email, search, social media, and paid advertising. Yet despite billions spent on customer acquisition, engagement rates continue to decline. Meanwhile, a different channel has quietly become the default way billions of people communicate.
London-based startup Wassist believes WhatsApp is about to become the next major commerce platform. The company has raised a $1.1 million pre-seed round led by Playfair, with participation from Indeed founder Paul Forster, Meta board member Charlie Songhurst, Cleo founder Barney Hussey-Yeo, and angels from Balderton Capital and Dawn Capital.
The funding will be used to accelerate product development and expand the company’s no-code platform, which allows businesses to deploy AI-powered WhatsApp agents in minutes.
AI shopping is moving away from brands
As consumers increasingly turn to ChatGPT, Gemini, and AI-powered search tools for product recommendations, brands face a growing challenge: they are losing ownership of customer conversations.
When customers ask an AI assistant which product to buy, the interaction often takes place within OpenAI, Google, or another platform. The brand rarely sees the questions being asked or the factors driving purchasing decisions.
Wassist was created to change that. Instead of directing shoppers to external AI platforms, the company enables brands to deploy their own AI ambassadors directly inside WhatsApp, allowing businesses to maintain one-to-one relationships with customers while gathering valuable insights from every interaction.
The timing appears favourable. Meta expanded its WhatsApp Business API in recent years, while advances in large language models have made conversational commerce significantly more practical and affordable.
From Oxford engineer to WhatsApp commerce founder
Wassist was founded in 2025 by Josh Warwick, a computer science graduate from Oxford University. Before launching the company, Warwick served as Technical Lead at engineering consultancy Theodo, where he helped build products for organisations including Admiral and Cleo. He later became co-founder and CTO of proptech startup Ark.
The idea for Wassist emerged from Warwick’s deep experience building on WhatsApp since 2023 and understanding the complexity behind the platform’s infrastructure.
Building on WhatsApp’s Business API typically requires handling message templates, approval processes, webhooks, routing systems, media management, payment flows, and conversation rules. For most businesses, that means months of engineering work.
Warwick spent ten months building Wassist largely during weekend hackathons. During that period, the platform generated more than 2,000 customer conversations without paid marketing. Today, that figure has grown to over 80,000 conversations.
The startup recently made its first hire and was selected for Balderton Capital’s Launched programme.
“WhatsApp is about to become the default commerce channel for businesses. OpenAI wants those conversations to happen in ChatGPT and Google wants them in Search, but customers already spend their time on WhatsApp. We built Wassist so brands can own those conversations themselves,” said Josh Warwick.
How Wassist turns WhatsApp into a sales channel
Wassist allows a merchant to create an AI-powered WhatsApp agent simply by entering a store URL. The platform automatically creates a brand-trained assistant capable of answering product questions, recommending items, recovering abandoned carts, handling order updates, and guiding customers through purchases.
Unlike many conversational commerce tools that redirect shoppers back to a website, Wassist keeps the experience inside the conversation thread, creating a more seamless buying journey.
The platform also integrates with popular e-commerce tools, including Shopify, Klaviyo, Recharge, and Yotpo.
“No one has built a truly agentic WhatsApp layer for small businesses. With three billion users already on the platform, the combination of WhatsApp and intelligent commerce agents represents a major shift in how businesses engage customers,” said Lucia Polverino, Investor at Playfair.
Competition
Wassist enters an increasingly competitive market where startups are betting that AI-powered conversations will become the next major customer acquisition channel.
Legacy players like Berlin-based Charles (which raised a $20 million Series A led by Salesforce Ventures) and global tool Wati, backed by $35 million in total funding, including a Series B led by Tiger Global and Shopify, have proven that brands want WhatsApp communication. However, many of these established platforms rely heavily on rigid, human-built flowcharts. Wassist differentiates itself by deploying dynamic, LLM-driven AI agents right out-of-the-box.
Wassist’s differentiation lies in its focus on WhatsApp-first commerce. Rather than treating messaging as a support channel, the company is positioning WhatsApp as the primary destination for sales, service, marketing, and transactions.
The bigger picture
The battle for AI-powered commerce is intensifying. OpenAI wants shopping conversations to happen inside ChatGPT. Google wants them inside Search. Meta wants businesses and consumers to transact directly through WhatsApp. Wassist is betting that brands themselves should own those conversations.
With more than three billion users on WhatsApp globally and strong adoption already visible in markets such as India, Brazil, and Mexico, the company sees a rare opportunity to build the infrastructure layer connecting AI agents with the world’s most widely used messaging platform.
The question now is whether European and US businesses will embrace WhatsApp commerce as quickly as emerging markets already have. If they do, Wassist could find itself at the centre of one of the biggest shifts in online retail since the rise of mobile shopping.
