Grabango’s mobile app
Grabango
Grabango, a venture-backed startup he was vying to take over Amazon in cashless checkout technology, it’s shutting down after it couldn’t raise enough money to stay afloat.
“Although the company established itself as a leader in cashless technology, it was unable to secure the funding it needed to continue providing services to its customers,” a spokesperson said in a statement to CNBC on Wednesday. “The company would like to thank its employees, investors and customers for all their hard work and dedication.”
Food technology publication The spoon reported earlier about the closure of Grabango.
Launched in 2016, Grabango developed checkout-free technology that uses computer vision and machine learning to track and record items as shoppers grab them from store shelves. Will Glaser, founder and CEO of Grabango, is a longtime Bay Area technologist who co-founded music streaming service Pandora.
The company employed approximately 100 employees, according to LinkedIn and Pitchbook.
Grabango has raised just over $73 million, Pitchbook data shows, with its most significant funding round coming in 2021, before the market turns. In June of that year, Grabango raised $39 million in a round led by Commerce Ventures, with participation from Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund as well as its venture arms Unilever and Honeywell.
In February of this year, Glaser said Worthy the company had plans to go public “in a few years with a market capitalization of $10 billion to $15 billion.”
The IPO market has dried up since early 2022, with just three notable venture-backed companies making their US debut this year. The lack of liquidity has hit the venture industry, making it harder for companies to raise new capital and for startups, other than a select few AI companies, to raise capital.
Based in Berkeley, California, Grabango was seen as one of the main competitors to Amazon’s checkout-free offering, called Just Walk Out. Other startups in the space include AiFi and Trigo.
Grabango had signed deals with grocers including Aldi and Giant Eagle, along with convenience store chains 7-Eleven and Circle K. Amazon has targeted its Just Walk Out service at stores and retailers in airports, stadiums and hospitals, among others spaces.
Amazon in April pulled its cashier-less checkout technology from US Fresh stores and Whole Foods supermarkets. In a blog post After that decision, Glaser said that Amazon’s reliance on shelf sensor technology in the JWO system “turned out to be its Achilles’ heel.” Glaser said Grabango eschewed off-the-shelf sensors in favor of computer vision that put it on a path to “broad adoption.”
“This is a classic parable of the Tortoise and the Hare, but with the players taking on surprising roles,” Glaser wrote. “The much larger Amazon took an early lead, but couldn’t turn it into sustained success. The nimbler Grabango, ironically, took the more difficult technical route and is now reaping the rewards of its patience with a substantially more capable system.”
— CNBC’s Ari Levy contributed to this report.
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