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Faire, the wholesale marketplace, hired former Coupang and Uber CTO Thuan Pham as its technology chief, CEO Max Rhodes tells Axios exclusively.

Why it matters: Pham will help the company leverage AI on its platform. 

What they're saying: "The real heart of our tech investment is using machine learning to help retailers find the best way to stock their stores with the best-selling items they can find," Rhodes says.

The company wants to save retailers and brands time, and "we definitely view technology as part of that," he says.

Case in point: Faire wants to enable retailers reviewing inventory to automatically place orders and add products through its platform.  

Zoom in: The company's tech teams, which include IT, data and engineering, have over 300 people today.

Faire plans on building this team out under Pham.

The company's former CTO, Marcelo Cortes, will transition into a new role as chief architect.

Catch up quick: Faire has been building out its executive team, including tapping Dan Hockenmaier as chief strategy officer this year, and Neervi Patel as chief people officer, and Ami Vora as chief product officer last year.

Meanwhile, Pham has experience scaling organizations from 40 people to 2,000 people and worked with Coupang pre-IPO through to being a public company, Rhodes says.

Context: Faire laid off 20% of its staff, which affected around 250 people in engineering, product, design and data science, as part of a restructuring last fall.

The company said at the time the move was to "better align our teams with our long-term vision."

Flashback: Faire raised a $416 million Series G extension round in 2022, more than doubling its previous round's figure.

The company has raised over $1.5 billion to date.

Faire taps Coupang exec as CTO as it beefs up AI

Thuan Pham will help the company build out its AI capabilities.

Thuan Pham speaking at a conference. Photo: Anthony Kwan/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Retail tech

Faire, the wholesale marketplace, hired former Coupang and Uber CTO Thuan Pham as its technology chief, CEO Max Rhodes tells Axios exclusively.Why it matters: Pham will help the company leverage AI on its platform.

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Faire taps Coupang exec as CTO as it beefs up AI

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