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BFD Expert Voices - Retail Deals

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Daydream, set to debut this fall, is aiming to bring a better search and discovery experience to shoppers, CEO Julie Bornstein tells Axios.

Why it matters: Deploying AI to make products more searchable could drive more revenue for retailers.

Driving the news: The company raised a $50 million seed round last week co-led by Forerunner Ventures and Index Ventures, with GV (formerly Google Ventures) and True Ventures participating.

How it works: Using a mix of AI, machine learning and computer vision, Daydream takes the search criteria that's asked for, including the context, and translates that into the most-effective search.

The company has nearly  2,000 brand partnerships, including those with Net-A-Porter, Markarian, Jimmy Choo, Doen, Everlane and Alo Yoga.

Daydream only enables search and discovery, and doesn't sell the products on its site.

State of play: Amazon, Google and TikTok employ AI for search and discovery in some fashion, and a wave of startups has emerged leveraging AI for similar purposes.

AI-powered search platform Constructor just closed a $25 million Series B round led by Sapphire Ventures.

Lily AI, another ecommerce product discovery platform, raised a $20 million Series B round led by Conductive Ventures in March

Syte, a Tel Aviv-based visual search and product discovery startup, raised a $30 million late-stage round in 2020.

What they're saying: Daydream's deep bench of customers differentiates it from other players, which have "a pretty limited supply of recommendations," Bornstein says.

"You can have really cool technology, but if you don't have the product to serve up, it's kind of irrelevant," she adds. 

Context: Bornstein — who headed shopping recommendations platform The Yes through its acquisition by Pinterest in 2022 — has also had stops at Nordstrom, Urban Outfitters, Sephora and Stitch Fix.

Her Daydream co-founders include CTO Matt Fisher, formerly with Microsoft; chief product officer Dan Cary, formerly with Google's AI research group; chief commercial officer Lisa Green, formerly with Google, The Yes and Condé Nast; and chief strategy officer Richard Kim, former head of shopping at Pinterest.

What's next: The seed round gives Daydream "years" of runway, Bornstein says.

Eventually, Daydream hopes to enable consumers to shop with friends or shop in other verticals, she says.

Daydream aims to power e-commerce search and discovery with AI

The AI-powered platform aims to debut its platform this fall.

Animated illustration of a pattern of speech bubbles made of search bars with blinking cursors.

Venture capital funding

Daydream, set to debut this fall, is aiming to bring a better search and discovery experience to shoppers, CEO Julie Bornstein tells Axios.Why it matters: Deploying AI to make products more searchable <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="could drive more revenue" data-vars-click-url="https://www.axios.com/pro/retail-deals/2024/05/28/generative-ai-small-retailers" data-vars-content-id="f99dc132-45f4-4557-bbed-356ff80942b5" data-vars-headline="Daydream aims to power e-commerce search and discovery with AI" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.axios.com/pro/retail-deals/2024/05/28/generative-ai-small-retailers" target="_self">could drive more revenue</a> for retailers.

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Daydream aims to power e-commerce search and discovery with AI

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