Product photo performance engine Bloom has announced that it has raised $1.1 million at the close of its seed funding round. The AI-driven platform has garnered backing from various high-powered venture firms and angel investors, bringing Bloom one step closer to bringing generative AI to eCommerce.
Founded by Aarlo Stone Fish, a Yale alumnus with 20 years of experience as a software engineer and an AI expert, and Sam Dundas, a lifelong entrepreneur and product builder, Bloom uses generative AI to improve customers’ online shopping experiences and drive more sales. Bloom’s technology tracks a consumer’s on-site behaviors such as clicks, zooms, swipes, and bounces and then compiles that behavioral data to deliver pixel-by-pixel the most compelling and personalized images possible. The result is that consumers spend more time on the page and eventually purchase. eCommerce sites integrating Bloom have seen a boost in their conversion rates ranging between 5-14% without the merchant lifting a finger.
“We’re building the engine to power billions of shopper sessions with 100% personalized content,” said Dundas. “Bloom is positioned to become an essential layer to the e-commerce tech stack.”
Bloom’s seed funding round was backed by prominent investors who have supported a wide range of startups, including those in the AI sector. Investors in the seed round include Inovia Capital; AIX Ventures, featuring Investing Partners Richard Socher (founder of MetaMind), Pieter Abbeel (co-founder of Covariant), Chris Manning (director of Stanford AI Lab), and Anthony Goldbloom (founder of Kaggle); Forum Ventures, which also invested in Bloom during its pre-seed accelerators; OneValley Investments; and The Y Startup Index, co-founded by Sean Glass, a prolific angel investor and serial entrepreneur.
With eCommerce accounting for $4.93 trillion worldwide and expected to grow to $7.39 trillion by 2025 and mobile commerce purchases accounting for 72.9% of all online purchases, Bloom helps its partners get more of these sales with its mobile-optimized product photo engine. By integrating Bloom into their sites, merchants, especially those with $1+ million in sales, can enhance the online shopping experience with a done-for-you AI-driven solution that closes more sales without investing additional precious time or human resources into the process.
“Showing the same product photos to every shopper is medieval,” said Shaun Johnson, founding partner at AIX Ventures and seed round investor. “A shopper should see a photo that is generated to meet their specific needs, including the model type and environment. Bloom is this dynamic photo solution that is taking e-commerce photos into the future.”
Bloom initially came to market with a generative AI product capable of creating photo-realistic fashion models, indistinguishable from real-life people. After launching Bloom’s beta version and collecting feedback from 200 eCommerce merchants, Stone Fish and Dundas discovered that brands don’t understand how their existing assets perform. Wanting to find a solution to this problem that delivered a clear ROI, Bloom was born. The seed funding will enable the Bloom team to bring its solutions to more merchants and continue to expand its capabilities, eventually achieving its ultimate vision of linking its performance engine with generative AI in real-time.
Bloom is currently available on Shopify, accessible to the over two million eCommerce merchants on the platform.
