Former Bolt CEO Maju Kuruvilla has tripled to $100M

SpanishThe AI ​​e-commerce startup founded by former Bolt CEO Maju Kuruvilla, has raised $15 million in new funding, valuing the company at $100 million after the investment.

Led by NewRoad Capital Partners, the full Series A round comes a year after the Seattle-based startup. he earned 6 million dollars at a cost of $30 million in pre-financing. Madrona, DNX Ventures, Streamlined Ventures, and strategic angel investors participated, bringing the total investment to $21 million, according to the startup.

Retailers are facing changes in the way consumers find products online, as AI tools, social media platforms, and recommendation engines increasingly make purchasing decisions before consumers reach a brand’s website. Kuruvilla (pictured above) wants to solve this problem with Spangle – and put it in the form of software that helps retailers to customize their shopping experience according to what consumers are going through on their website, using real-time, AI-generated product recommendations and layouts.

Since its discovery in March of last year, Spangle has signed up nine clients, including fashion retailers Revolve, Alexander Wang, and Steve Madden, with online sales of about $3.8 billion, Kuruvilla said in an interview.

Traffic on Spangle’s platform has grown nearly 57% month-on-month, all customers are expanding their use of the app, and the founders said they increased their annual revenue in the fourth quarter, although they did not disclose their revenue.

At the heart of Spangle’s strategy is a simple idea: instead of sending consumers to pre-made products or group pages, the brand is on a blank page. Spangle’s AI populates the site in real-time using a proprietary product called ProductGPT, drawing on signals such as where the shopper came from, what they searched for or clicked on, and how those visitors reacted, on products, ideas, and content that resonated with that moment.

Kuruvilla told TechCrunch that developers who use Spangle are seeing a 50% increase in revenue per visit, a doubling of their spend, and a 15% increase in average revenue.

“We’re future-proofing the brand,” Kuruvilla said, adding that Spangle trains its AI model on individual product listings and functionality, allowing purchases to automatically adjust.

Spangle’s software has helped Revolve transform the shopping experience in real time, improving about 60% in return on spend and adding 50% to each visit, said Ryan Pabelona, ​​vice president of marketing.

Before starting Spangle in 2024, Kuruvilla served as the CEO of One click payment company Bolt and previously spent more than a decade at Amazon, where he worked on key marketing and AI practices. He co-founded the startup with CTO Fei Wang, who was Amazon’s senior engineer working on Alexa technology and customer service and later became CTO at Saks Off 5th.

Kuruvilla said his experience running commerce and payment platforms led Spangle to focus on building infrastructure rather than adding maintenance. Others, he added, see the startup as a version of Shopify for AI-powered commerce.

Spangle method is also related to a switch to an AI-equipped shopping center like OPIC and AAIP and multiple browser support. As consumers increasingly rely on chatbots and automated systems to research and compare products, Kuruvilla said businesses will need software that can respond dynamically to salespeople and machines, rather than serving the same pages to every visitor.

Kuruvilla told TechCrunch that Spangle took off in the last two years when three major trends changed: consumers’ growing access to AI tools, the proliferation of search engines beyond Google and Meta, and advances in AI technology that have dramatically lowered the cost and time lag of creating real-time experiences. Together, he said, these changes made it possible to make incremental changes with an AI-based marketing strategy that can instantly adapt to the way the buying process evolves.

Currently, Spangle has six full-time employees, proving how AI tools allow startups to scale business applications with small teams.

With the new investment, Kuruvilla said Spangle plans to invest more in research and development, expand its engineering team, and build its sales organization.