Standard Cognition, an autonomous checkout startup, has raised $35 million in a Series B funding round led by the EQT Ventures fund, with participation from existing investors Initialized Capital, CRV and Y Combinator. This brings the company’s total funding to more than $86 million and its post-money valuation to $535 million.
Standard Cognition will use the funding to continue efforts to sign customers in the U.S. and Japan, as well as to grow its team both domestically and internationally. The company plans to open autonomous checkout stores for two existing customers in Q3 and Q4 2019.
The company also operates its own 1,900-square-foot retail store in the San Francisco Bay Area where it sells a mix of food, cleaning supplies and general household and convenience store items. Customers can use the Standard Checkout mobile app to check in. The system identifies everything they are carrying and bills them as they exit the store.
Advertisement
Standard Cognition is setting itself up as an alternative to the Amazon Go model, with a system that only requires light-touch installation via cameras on the store ceiling and the ability to accommodate any existing store layout. Standard Cognition has committed to not leverage facial recognition or biometrics in order to comply with global privacy regulations, but it does use the data it does collect to provide insights to retail customers.
The solution provider also has bolstered its retail credentials by recruiting industry veterans as executives, with a team that includes Head of Global Operations Jon Nam, who previously held positions at Macy’s and RetailNext, and Head of Corporate Strategy and Growth Evan Shiue, who has worked at Walmart and PepsiCo.
