Retail tech startup offers an AI solution for pricing products

Retail tech startup Particl launched AI Copilot, a new product that helps customers identify both new and mispriced products, CEO Josh Wilson tells Axios.

Why it matters: Retailers need sophisticated software to help them manage supply chains efficiently.

How it works: The South Jordan, Utah-based company's product compares clients' data to competitors and produces a grade card assessing their performance, Wilson says.

• Particl follows hundreds of thousands of brands and uses that data to help companies with their product strategy, Wilson says.
• The platform helps retailers and brands with new product launches and benchmarks those products against competitors' offerings.
• It also anticipates when a product is nearing the end of its life cycle so that retailers don't make too large of an investment in inventory.

Context: Men's swimwear brand Chubbies used the tool to expand into pants.

• The product provided real-time data on competing products, including price points and top color, styles and sizes, by location.

Zoom in: Particl is using a large language model in combination with generative AI to solve difficult problems such as product taxonomy.

• Wilson says his company had spent years trying to solve taxonomy, but the approach solved that and a couple of big internal problems in a matter of months, he says.

Flashback: The company raised an $8.5 million Series A round last year, which was extended to include RevRoad Capital, Wilson says.

• It has also raised a $4.5 million seed round.
• Wilson says that during the SVB crash, RevRoad, which recently closed its first fund at $61 million, provided Particl with cash to pay its employees until the situation got sorted.

What's next: While Particl has plenty of capital for the next few years, it has received inbound investor interest, Wilson says.

• "If an interesting opportunity arose from a great partner that would open up avenues we don't currently have, we would definitely take it seriously," he says.
• Partnerships are often structured with a cap table portion in mind, Wilson adds.