Amazon cashierless tech competitor Grabango shutters after failing to secure funding

Grabango, a venture-backed startup that was vying to take on Amazon in cashierless checkout technology, is shutting down after it was unable to raise enough money to stay afloat.

“Although the company established itself as a leader in checkout-free technology, it was not able to secure the funding it needed to continue providing service to its clients,” a spokesperson said in a statement to CNBC on Wednesday. “The company would like to thank its employees, investors, and clients for all their hard work and dedication.”

Food tech publication The Spoon reported earlier on Grabango’s closure.

Launched in 2016, Grabango was developing checkout-free technology that uses computer vision and machine learning to track and tally up items as shoppers grab them from store shelves. Will Glaser, Grabango’s founder and CEO, is a longtime Bay Area technologist who cofounded music streaming service Pandora.

The company employed roughly 100 employees, according to LinkedIn and Pitchbook.

Grabango raised just over $73 million, Pitchbook data shows, with its most sizable financing round coming in 2021, before the market turned. 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 the venture arms of Unilever and Honeywell.

In February of this year, Glaser told Axios the company had plans to go public “in a couple of years at a $10 billion to $15 billion market cap.”

The IPO market has dried up since early 2022, with just three notable venture-backed companies debuting in the U.S. this year. The lack of liquidity has hammered the venture industry, making it harder for firms to launch new funds and for startups, outside of a select few AI companies, to raise capital.

Based in Berkeley, California, Grabango was seen as one of the primary rivals to Amazon’s cashierless checkout offering, called Just Walk Out. Other startups in the space include AiFi and Trigo.

Grabango had inked 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 to convenience stores and retailers in airports, stadiums and hospitals, among other venues.

Amazon in April pulled its cashierless checkout technology from its U.S. Fresh stores and Whole Foods supermarkets. In a blog post following that decision, Glaser said Amazon’s reliance on shelf sensor technology in its JWO system had “proven to be its Achilles’ heel.” Glaser said Grabango eschewed shelf sensors in favor of computer vision which put it on a path for “widespread adoption.”

“This is a classic Tortoise and Hare parable, but with the players taking on surprising roles,” Glaser wrote. “The much larger Amazon lept to an early lead, but was unable to turn it into a sustained success. The more nimble Grabango, ironically, took the more difficult technical path, and is now reaping the benefits of its patience with a fundamentally more capable system.”

— CNBC’s Ari Levy contributed to this report.

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