ai-retail
(7)
SandStar AI Retail
SandStar AI Retail is a retail-technology company that uses computer vision, deep learning and big-data analytics to power cashierless, autonomous shopping. Founded in 2017 as YI Tunnel and rebranded to SandStar after a 2020 Series B+ round, it builds AI vending machines, pure-vision unmanned stores and smart-store analytics that recognize what shoppers pick up - no RFID tags, barcodes or sensors required - and automatically generate the bill when they walk out. Its systems are deployed across roughly 30 countries and serve dozens of global brands and Fortune 500 operators, including a Coca-Cola Smart Lounge in Beijing.
Style Arcade
Style Arcade is an Australian-founded software company that builds a buying and planning workspace for fashion brands and retailers. Its platform pulls together sales, stock, orders, imagery and web data into one visual source of truth, then uses analytics and AI-driven recommendations to help merchandising teams plan ranges, forecast demand, optimize size curves and reorder inventory. Founded in 2018 by Michaela Wessels and Tristan Hoy, the company serves thousands of teams globally - including Ralph Lauren, David Jones, Princess Polly and Tibi - and positions itself as a faster, more visual alternative to spreadsheets and generic BI tools.
Eytan Daniyalzade
Eytan Daniyalzade is the co-founder and CEO of Toolio, a New York-based cloud platform that helps retailers plan, forecast, and allocate inventory using AI instead of spreadsheets. A Stanford-trained engineer, he built and sold the store-search app Stylr to Walmart in 2014, then spent five years leading omni-channel and digital initiatives at Walmart eCommerce - work that included Sam's Club Scan & Go and Walmart Pay - before leaving in 2019 to launch Toolio with longtime partner Berk Atikoglu. Toolio now serves more than 100 retailers, has managed over $1 billion in inventory, and raised an $8M Series A led by Jump Capital.
Fabrice Haiat
Fabrice Haiat is the co-founder and CEO of YOOBIC, a frontline employee experience platform used by more than 200 global brands including Boots, Lancome, Lacoste, Peloton, Puma and Sanofi. A Ecole Centrale Paris engineer and former McKinsey consultant, he built and sold energy-monitoring company Vizelia to Schneider Electric before launching YOOBIC in 2014 with his two brothers, Avi and Gilles. He argues that store and warehouse staff are assets rather than resources, and has raised roughly $80 million to digitize communication, training and task management for the world's deskless workers.
Justin Yoshimura
Justin Yoshimura is the founder, chairman, and CEO of CSC Generation, an AI-native retail holding company that acquires and modernizes established brands such as Sur La Table, Z Gallerie, and One Kings Lane. A high-school dropout who built a million-dollar cell-phone marketplace as a teenager, he went on to found the Y Combinator-backed loyalty platform 500friends (acquired by Merkle in 2014) and made the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. Today he runs CSC Generation as a Constellation Software-style roll-up, buying distressed retailers and rebuilding them on data, automation, and CSC's proprietary Genesis platform.
RUTI INC.
RUTI is a women's fashion label and boutique chain founded in 2009 by Israeli-American designer and former tech executive Ruti Zisser. Built on three rules - cool, flattering, and practical - the brand designs ready-to-wear clothing, shoes, bags and accessories aimed at women over 35, and pairs its slow-fashion boutiques with a homegrown AI platform (including opt-in facial recognition and a purpose-built retail CRM) that personalizes both in-store and online shopping. Headquartered in the Bay Area with stores across California, New York, Arizona and Dallas, RUTI raised a $6M Series A in 2019 led by Viola Ventures.
Yili Wu
Yili Wu is the founder and CEO of SandStar (formerly YI Tunnel), a computer-vision company that turns ordinary shops, shelves and vending machines into checkout-free, self-analyzing retail. A first-generation graduate of Tsinghua University's School of Software, he spent roughly eight years selling enterprise software at Oracle and IBM before betting that brick-and-mortar retail could be digitized the way e-commerce already had been. He founded the company in 2016, sold his first big contracts top-down to Fortune 500 headquarters in the US and Europe, and grew SandStar into a business operating across a dozen countries with dual bases in Beijing and Charlotte, North Carolina.