autonomous-retail
(3)
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.
Spencer Hewett
Spencer Hewett is the founder and CEO of RADAR, a New York retail-technology company that wires store ceilings with RFID and computer-vision sensors to locate inventory in real time. He dropped out of Washington University in St. Louis to take the Thiel Fellowship in 2012, spent years building and rebuilding the idea, and has since taken RADAR through Old Navy and American Eagle rollouts to a $1 billion valuation on a $170 million Series B closed in May 2026.
João Diogo Falcão
João Diogo 'JD' Falcão is the CEO and co-founder of AiFi Inc., the San Francisco-based company building the world's largest autonomous retail network. A PhD from Carnegie Mellon and Master's from Cornell in Robotics, JD spent years shaping AiFi's core technology as CTO before stepping up as Chief Executive in September 2025. Under his and the team's leadership, AiFi has deployed 300+ camera-only autonomous stores globally, processes over 90 petabytes of spatial data annually, and counts Microsoft, ALDI, and 7-Eleven among its partners. His central thesis: the physical world deserves to be as queryable as the internet.