Breaking
Wizard emerges from stealth - Feb 11, 2026 Native checkout goes live with Best Buy CEO Melissa Bridgeford: "91% of AI shopping is chat with no checkout" $50M Series A led by NEA, backed by Accel & Marc Lore 0% ads. 100% shoppable results. Five picks, not a thousand results Wizard emerges from stealth - Feb 11, 2026 Native checkout goes live with Best Buy CEO Melissa Bridgeford: "91% of AI shopping is chat with no checkout" $50M Series A led by NEA, backed by Accel & Marc Lore 0% ads. 100% shoppable results. Five picks, not a thousand results
Company Profile · AI Commerce · New York
Wizard logo

Wizard.

Shop smarter. Live easier. An AI agent that does the shopping - and the checkout - for you.

Wizard's brand mark, photographed against navy. The shopping agent launched publicly on February 11, 2026 after years in stealth.

Founded 2021 HQ · New York ~88 employees Series A · $50M
The Dispatch

The shopping cart, replaced by a conversation

Online shopping got harder, not easier. Twelve open tabs, forty reviews, a dozen near-identical products - and still no confidence in the "buy" button. Wizard's wager is that an AI agent can do that work instead, reading the reviews, comparing the options, and handing you a short list you can actually act on.

Wizard is an AI-native shopping agent. Ask it for "the best noise-canceling headphones for the gym and travel under $300," and it interprets the request in plain language, searches across websites, customer reviews, editorial and social content, and returns a tightly curated set of products - usually a top five - instead of an endless grid. Then it lets you complete the purchase through native checkout, without leaving the app. Cofounded by CEO Melissa Bridgeford and chairman Marc Lore, the New York company emerged from stealth on February 11, 2026.

$50M
Series A raised
Top 5
Curated picks, not thousands
0%
Ads in results
2026
Public launch
What It Does

Search, compare, and buy - in one flow

Most AI shopping tools stop at suggestions. Wizard's argument is that recommendations are the easy part; finishing the purchase is where the value sits. The company built its first native checkout with Best Buy, the largest U.S. electronics specialty retailer, so a shopper can go from query to confirmed order inside a single interface.

Under the hood, a multi-stage search and ranking system enriches product data across thousands of structured attributes, filters spam and low-quality content, and tunes relevance signals in real time. The result is deliberately small: a handful of options chosen from reviews, trusted editorial and social signal - designed to cut the choice overload that stalls online purchases.

Shoppable results, with and without ads

Wizard's stated comparison of ad load across AI shopping agents
Wizard
0%
Generalist agents
9%
Marketplace agents
54%
Source: Wizard, 2026. Figures are the company's own framing of ad load.
The online shopping experience today is highly fragmented. Wizard is simplifying that entire process by doing the work for you.
— Melissa Bridgeford, CEO & Cofounder
Products & Services

What you can do with Wizard

2026

AI Shopping Agent

Ask in plain language and get a curated top-five, drawn from websites, reviews, editorial and social content - no scrolling required.

2026

Native Checkout

Complete the purchase end to end inside Wizard. The first integration launched with Best Buy in electronics.

2026

Data Enrichment & Ranking

A proprietary engine enriches thousands of product attributes and filters low-quality content to keep results trustworthy.

2021

Conversational Commerce (SMS)

Wizard's original B2B text-message platform for brands - the technology and team that seeded today's agent.

Customers & Market

Who it serves, and where it fits

Who uses it

  • Consumers shopping online, starting with electronics
  • Retailers integrating native checkout (e.g. Best Buy)
  • Brands receiving shopper-behavior analytics
  • Private-beta users ahead of the 2026 public launch

Where it fits

  • Electronics first - a roughly $33B U.S. category
  • Apparel and beauty planned as next categories
  • Competing with Perplexity, ChatGPT, Amazon Rufus, Copilot
  • Its edge: purpose-built, ad-free, checkout-complete

The AI shopping agent market is crowding fast. ChatGPT reaches the most shoppers; Perplexity offers in-chat checkout through PayPal; Amazon runs Rufus, Buy for Me and Alexa+. Wizard's differentiation is narrow and deliberate: it does only shopping, refuses ad-driven ranking, and is wiring native checkout into retailers one integration at a time.

Business Model & Expertise

How the money works

Revenue

  • Take rates on completed purchases
  • Affiliate revenue via retailer partnerships
  • Shopper-behavior analytics for merchants
  • No ads, no sponsored product placements

Expertise on the team

  • Search, ranking and NLP for shopping intent
  • Retail data enrichment across product attributes
  • Marketplace and e-commerce operating experience
  • Remote, digital-first product culture (~88 people)
By 2030, AI agents will have majority adoption as the primary shopping interface for consumers globally.
— Melissa Bridgeford, CEO & Cofounder
The Founders

Who's behind Wizard

MB

Melissa Bridgeford

CEO & Cofounder

Harvard Business School alum; previously founded Stylust, later folded into Wizard.

ML

Marc Lore

Cofounder & Chairman

Founder of Jet.com and former head of Walmart U.S. e-commerce.

Timeline

From text messages to an AI agent

2021

$50M Series A

Led by NEA's Tony Florence, with Accel and Marc Lore participating. Lore joins as cofounder and chairman.

2021

B2B SMS commerce foundation

Wizard builds a text-message conversational-commerce platform and folds in Bridgeford's prior startup, Stylust.

2025

Quiet pivot to a consumer agent

As generative AI matures, Wizard shifts toward a consumer-first agent and runs a private beta to test engagement and conversion.

2026

Public launch from stealth

On February 11, 2026 Wizard launches publicly with native Best Buy checkout and an initial focus on electronics.

FAQ

Questions, answered

What is Wizard?

Wizard is an AI-native shopping agent that searches, compares and buys products for you. It reads reviews, editorial and social signals, returns a short curated list, and lets you check out natively without leaving the app.

Who founded Wizard?

Wizard was cofounded by CEO Melissa Bridgeford, a Harvard Business School alum and former founder of Stylust, and chairman Marc Lore, the founder of Jet.com and former head of Walmart U.S. e-commerce.

How does Wizard make money?

Through retailer partnerships - a mix of take rates and affiliate revenue - plus shopper analytics for merchants. Wizard avoids ads and sponsored product placements.

Where can I actually buy through Wizard?

At launch, Wizard offers native, end-to-end checkout with Best Buy in the electronics category, with apparel and beauty planned as future categories.

How is Wizard different from ChatGPT or Perplexity shopping?

Wizard is purpose-built only for shopping, returns a tightly curated top-five instead of long lists, runs no ads, and focuses on completing the purchase - not just recommending products.

Connect & Read More

Where to find Wizard

Watch & listen

Selected sources:

Fortune · Modern Retail · AdExchanger · PYMNTS · TechCrunch