Azoma wants to help brands win the AI shopping race. See the pitch deck that helped it raise $11.2 million.

Azoma, cofounded by Timur Luguev and Max Sinclair, just raised $11.2 million in Series A funding. Azoma Azoma helps brands get their products discovered by AI shopping agents. Its platform measures brands' AI visibility among specific shoppers and offers tips to improve. Azoma just raised $11.2 million in a round led by Puma Growth Partners. As people begin to delegate online purchases to AI assistants and agents, the startup Azoma wants to ensure its consumer-goods clients make the shopping list. Azoma works with brands to help their products be discovered by AI shopping agents and platforms, including OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini, Alexa for Shopping, and Walmart's Sparky. The company exclusively told CMO Insider on Wednesday that it had raised an $11.2 million Series A funding round, led by Puma Growth Partners. Founded in 2022, Azoma initially focused on helping brands show up prominently in AI search and chatbots, operating in the fast-growing field of generative engine optimization, or GEO. Then, over the past year, at least a dozen new AI shopping assistants from retailers rolled out, alongside the launch of personal AI assistants like Meta's Muse, OpenAI's Dots, and Instinct, which can also make purchases on a user's behalf. In December, Morgan Stanley estimated that AI-powered shopping assistants could account for up to $385 billion in US e-commerce sales by 2030. "The space has evolved rapidly from customers just really caring about answer engines to caring about the other types as well," Azoma CEO Max Sinclair told CMO Insider. Azoma's customers include Unilever, L'Oréal, Reckitt, and Mars. It offers them a service it calls agentic commerce optimization, a technique that helps make their products more discoverable by large language models and more likely to be recommended by them. Azoma suggests actions the clients can take to improve their visibility, from honing their marketplace listings to optimizing their content on YouTube and Reddit. It also uses "digital twin" technology to simulate different consumer demographics, so brands can see how their products are presented to the specific shoppers they want to target. Sinclair said Azoma differs from other GEO companies because it's laser-focused on the commerce space and working with brands who sell physical goods. "Many of our customers have tried these generic GEO platforms and found that they don't understand commerce at all," Sinclair said. "They don't understand the integrations, they don't understand the workflows, they don't understand the existing tech stack, they don't understand how the teams work, how they're operated, how they're motivated." Sinclair said Azoma plans to invest the fresh funds in ensuring its technology can track across all the latest agents, from Meta's Muse to TikTok's new Shopping Assistant. The company charges a fee per brand, geography, and shopping agent. Sinclair estimated the company's head count would grow to around 80 to 100 people next year, up from 40 currently, as it ramps up hiring in areas including sales, customer success, AI research, software development, and operations. Azoma also plans to integrate data from the Tesco-owned retail analytics company Dunnhumby to help brands determine whether increasing their share of voice on a platform like ChatGPT translates into a sales lift at brick-and-mortar retailers. Dunnhumby Ventures also participated in the round, alongside Twinpath, Mars IAF, Rank Ventures, and Ignite Ventures. Check out the pitch deck Azoma used to secure its $11.2 million Series A investment, shared exclusively with CMO Insider. Some of the slides have been omitted or redacted. Azoma's tech helps brands drive revenue through AI shopping agents. Azoma The 'about us' slide provides company details. Azoma Azoma has offices in London and Toronto and has previously received investment from eBay Ventures and Dunnhumby Ventures. Its clients include Unilever, Reckitt, and Heinz. Azoma The presentation features testimonials from clients at Dentsu, Perfect Ted, L'Oréal, and Mars. Azoma Azoma tees up the business opportunity. Azoma Consumers are using AI to discover brands and products. Azoma It cites 2025 research from Capgemini that says 58% of consumers have replaced traditional search engines with generative AI tools for product recommendations. Azoma quotes Harley Finkelstein, Shopify's president. Azoma Finkelstein said on Shopify's August earnings call that traffic and orders coming in from AI channels to Shopify stores had tripled over the past year. A Shopify blog post, published in May, said AI-referred traffic converted at a 50% higher rate and had an average order value 14% higher than traditional search. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has lauded its AI-powered shopping assistant. Azoma Alexa for Shopping was used by more than 350 million Amazon customers over the past 12 months, Jassy said on the company's July earnings call. Jassy said that US customers who use Alexa for Shopping spent 40% more per order than those who don't. Walmart has an AI-powered shopping assistant called Sparky. Azoma Walmart CEO John Furner said on the company's August earnings call that the number of customers using Sparky was up 70% year-on-year. Similar to Amazon, Walmart said customers who used Sparky for shopping spent 40% more per order than those who didn't. This slide uses Cloudflare data that shows bots have surpassed humans in web traffic. Azoma At the time of the presentation, in September, Meta's Muse was the top app in the US Apple and Android app stores. Azoma The presentation moves to the challenges Azoma solves. Azoma Azoma says that as AI adoption increases, brand real estate shrinks. Azoma Brands have fewer opportunities to control channels and content in agentic shopping experiences. Azoma This slide shows the differences between traditional e-commerce and agentic commerce. Azoma Agents gather information about products from multiple channels, including online discussion forums, editorial content, reviews, and brands' own websites. Azoma specializes in agentic commerce optimization, or ACO. Azoma It covers answer engines, retailer shopping assistants, and personal AI agents. Azoma This slide analyzes the differences between ACO and GEO. Azoma Azoma says that, when done effectively, ACO can boost customer acquisition. Azoma The presentation then introduces a case study. Azoma Azoma says it helped drive a 43% revenue uplift for Mars compared with a control group. Azoma Read the original article on Business Insider

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