Smart shopping cart maker Veeve has added more cash to its basket.
The Seattle-based startup raised $6.7 million in new funding as the company looks to push its retail innovations to more physical grocery stores.
Founded in 2018 by two former Amazon managers, Veeve is part of a wave of tech companies working to reimagine how shoppers find, weigh, scan and pay for their own items, upending traditional checkout routines. Veeve’s technology detects and scans items as they’re put into a cart, and keeps a running tally on a built-in display, with a payment system that lets shoppers avoid checkout lines, without using a separate app.
While the company’s first product was a full shopping cart, it now offers a “Plug & Play” device that can turn regular shopping carts into smart carts. Veeve also plans to deploy a new version of its initial product that is lighter and can hold 50% more items. The new cart can run 18 hours a day with a swappable battery and has a weather resistant design.
Veeve in May announced a deal to put its full smart carts in some Albertsons stores in the United States. Veeve smart carts are currently deployed at four retail chains in six U.S. states, with multiple stores at each chain, averaging about 10-15 carts per store, according to co-founder and CEO Shariq Siddiqui.
“This new funding will allow us to continue our rapid growth by speeding up our product roadmap and scaling globally,” Siddiqui said Thursday in an email to GeekWire.
Last week, he was onstage with his cart at the GeekWire Summit in Seattle as part of the Inventions We Love session.
“Retailers need to understand how customers are interacting, not just online,” Siddiqui said at the Summit. “But we have absolutely no idea how customers are engaging, what items are going out of the cart before the shopping trip is completed. With the power of this, the retailers have a lot more that they can do with customers.”
Veeve competes with Amazon, which announced a new version of its Amazon Dash smart shopping cart in July, saying it plans to start rolling out the Dash 2 to Whole Foods Market stores.
Veeve’s new investment round was co-led by Foothill Ventures and Creative Ventures, with participation from XRC Labs and Food Retail Ventures, as well as existing Veeve investor Flying Fish Partners.
The 15-person company has raised about $9 million in funding.
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