Major internet businesses want you to use AI to shop as well as make or summarise content. OpenAI, Google, and Amazon have made significant investments in AI assistants who study new product categories for you and recommend the best ones to purchase.

Startups such as Perplexity, Daydream, and Cherry have developed businesses on AI for product discovery. All of these efforts have resulted in more customers utilising AI to shop. Onton (formerly known as Deft), an AI-powered furniture purchasing platform, reports that its user base has grown from 50,000 to over 2 million monthly active users, servicing millions of queries and image production.

Fuelled by this expansion, the firm announced today that it has raised $7.5 million in a fresh investment round red by Footwork and including participation from Liquid 2, Parable Ventures, and 43, among others. This round increases the startup’s overall investment to around $10 million.

Using this capital, the company plans to grow into new sectors such as clothes and, eventually, consumer electronics.

The company switched from Deft to Onton earlier this year, claiming confusion with the former name and trouble obtaining a premium domain.

According to Zach Hudson, co-founder of Onton, while large language models (LLMs) are useful for predicting probable intent, they have not solved many e-commerce challenges. He also stated that the startup has noticed an increase in the average time it takes a consumer to make a purchasing choice.

The company’s fundamental technology is based on neuro-symbolic architecture. Hudson stated that by taking this method, the company will be able to avoid the hallucinatory problems associated with LLMs while also providing superior, logical search results. He also mentioned that the startup’s algorithm can learn facts from the real world that may not be contained in a product description.

Let’s imagine you’re looking for pet-friendly furniture. Our tools recognise that if an item contains polyester, it will be more stain and scratch resistant, making it more pet-friendly. “Our tools learn these things from every single search and become smarter at a faster rate,” Hudson explained.

He further stated that searching for a product that may be referred to differently on numerous websites does not always yield positive results. The company’s AI algorithm takes those events into account when delivering findings.

Onton has developed many input methods and features to assist users with short- and long-term decisions. You may now upload an image or a prompt to describe what you want to achieve with your home or office setup, and Onton will find you furniture based on it.

Onton also provides an unlimited canvas with picture production, where you may combine existing images with the products you locate for ideation. You may also include photographs of your room and instruct the program to furnish it.

Instead of relying just on conversation, the company believes that these capabilities will provide customers with more possibilities for getting what they want, even if they don’t know how to articulate it precisely.

The business claims that using these tactics has resulted in 3-5x higher conversions than standard e-commerce sites since users can trust the underlying data.

Hudson stated that the technology and interface modifications it implemented will make it easier to launch clothes. The company is developing a catalogue for the category and intends to debut the vertical shortly. In this sector, it will compete with businesses such as Daydream, Aesthetic, and Style.AI.

The company has expanded from three full-time employees in 2023 to ten presently, with hopes to increase the team to 15 by employing engineers and researchers.