While Amazon Go helped pioneer the concept of fully contactless stores, others like 7-Eleven and Walmart have also entered this space. And the market is growing with several startups like Standard Cognition, Zippin, AiFi, Grabango, and Trigo providing technology to retailers.
However, in Europe, Portuguese startup Sensei has been growing its contactless retail platform and has now raised a €15 million Series A funding round led by BlueCrow Capital. Also participating were new investors Lince Capital, Explorer Investments, and Kamay Ventures (investment arm of Coca-Cola and Arcor Group), as well as existing investors Metro AG and Techstars Ventures.
In 2021, Lisbon-based Sensei raised a seed round of $6.5 million (€5.4 million). At that time, the funding was led by Seeya Ventures and Iberis Capital, and a 200 million fund participated.
The startup is currently targeting 1,000 fully autonomous dealerships by 2026. It already operates with customers in Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Brazil, with plans to expand into Central and Northern Europe.
Using computer vision, AI-based sensors, and real-time algorithms, Sensei’s system automatically updates customers’ shopping carts and displays a list of items available for immediate payment, with their identity and privacy protected.
Contactless stores reduce checkout costs, prevent out-of-stocks, and give retailers real-time visibility into store operations.
In a call with Sensei CEO and co-founder Vasco Portugal, he said the company “has been growing, especially in the last year. . . We are currently present in five regions.”
“There are two problems in the retail industry. The customer experience is poor. Second, it is very difficult to process all sales information in real time. Now it’s about store automation like it’s about car automation or factory automation. “I think it’s a natural transition,” he added.
Competition in the space is enormous. Among other competitors looking to raise significant funding from investors is Standard Cognition, which raised $239.4 million. Trigo raised $199 million. Grabango raised $93.8 million. AiFi raised $87.1 million. Zippin raised $44 million.
