retail-automation
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Mad Street Den found the mess behind the dress
An AI company learned to read clothes, then discovered a larger business in reading the disorder behind them. Its journey from retail catalogues to enterprise automation now runs through M2P Fintech.
Bossa Nova taught robots to read shelves. Walmart changed the assignment.
A shelf-scanning robot made the supermarket legible to software. Bossa Nova’s rise, Walmart reversal, and unusually candid afterlife reveal how quickly a customer can change the meaning of a good invention.
ECRS built the network nobody wanted. Then the grocers caught up.
A supplier network with no takers became part of a much bigger idea: make the checkout, the deli, the website, and the stockroom speak the same language.
KIOSK Information and the Door That Wouldn’t Quit
A returns kiosk is a promise made in steel: do the boring job, again and again. KIOSK Information Systems has spent three decades learning what it takes to keep that promise.
The Checkout Vanishes. The Store Starts Talking.
Cloudpick turns a shop into a digital twin that can watch products move, settle the bill, and tell an operator what happened. Its wager is that the most useful AI in retail may be the kind shoppers barely notice.
DTEK.ai
DTEK.ai is a Dubai-based retail AI company whose flagship product, SWIFT, replaces barcode scanning with computer vision: shoppers set their items down on a kiosk, the system recognises them in a fraction of a second, and the transaction closes in about twenty to thirty seconds. Founded in January 2021 as Dukkantek - a cloud point-of-sale and store-management platform for the corner grocers of the Gulf - the company rebranded around late 2023 and rebuilt itself around vision models, adding SIGHT (turning existing CCTV into non-biometric store analytics) and a layer of configurable AI agents for loss prevention and reporting. It has raised $15.2 million across two rounds from investors including Global Founders Capital, BECO Capital, Rocketship and Wamda Capital, and in May 2026 signed its most visible deal to date: a rollout of SWIFT across 50 Oasis by ADNOC convenience stores in the UAE, with ADNOC Distribution citing a target of more than 60 percent faster checkout.
GreyOrange
GreyOrange is a warehouse-automation company that builds AI software and mobile robots to run fulfillment operations for retailers, distributors and 3PLs. Its GreyMatter fulfillment operating system continuously optimizes decisions across a distribution center, orchestrating fleets of Ranger mobile robots, people and existing equipment to move goods, pick orders and manage inventory. Founded in India in 2011 and now headquartered in Atlanta, the company sells its technology outright or as a monthly robotics-as-a-service subscription, and has raised more than half a billion dollars from investors including Mithril Capital, Tiger Global and Blackstone-adjacent funds.
Kevin Johnson
Kevin H. Johnson is the CEO of Focal Systems, an AI-powered retail operations company deploying shelf-scanning cameras across brick-and-mortar stores worldwide. A 30-year veteran of building and scaling tech businesses, he grew Ebates forty-fold before selling it to Rakuten for $1 billion, then led Udemy as a publicly-traded company, and now applies that commercial track record to the frontier problem of putting real-time AI intelligence into every grocery aisle.
Krishna Motukuri
Krishna Motukuri is the CEO and Co-Founder of Zippin, a San Francisco-based AI startup powering checkout-free retail stores across four continents. After seven years at Amazon and stints building e-commerce businesses in India and South Africa under Naspers Group, he co-founded Zippin in 2018 after a personal frustration with grocery checkout lines sparked the idea. Zippin uses computer vision, sensor fusion, and machine learning to let shoppers grab items and walk out without stopping to pay — technology now deployed in sports stadiums, airport terminals, college campuses, and hospital cafeterias worldwide, including Super Bowl venues and the French Open.