US-based autonomous retail systems developer AiFi raised an undisclosed amount on Monday from investors including mobile chipmaker Qualcomm’s corporate venturing unit, Qualcomm Ventures, to increase its total funding to $30m.
The round also featured venture capital firms and existing backers Cervin Ventures and TransLink Capital in addition to private investment platform and new investor Plum Alley.
AiFi provides autonomous retail technology that allows existing stores to be retrofitted to reduce the need for human checkout staff. It also expects some 330 new stores to be opened using its technology over the course of 2021.
Although AiFi has not revealed details of its past financing, Crunchbase states it raised $4m in a 2016 seed round featuring Amino Capital, Plug and Play, Stanford StartX and Oriza Ventures – all of which list it as a portfolio company – as well as Greylock, which does not.
The company added approximately $11m in a January 2019 round led by Cervin Ventures and backed by TransLink Capital and Plug and Play, according to Crunchbase, though those figures have not been confirmed by AiFi itself.
Carlos Kokron, Qualcomm Ventures’ managing director for the Americas, said: “As intelligence continues to move from the cloud to the wireless edge and demand for contactless shopping grows, we are excited to be investing in AiFi.
“We were very impressed with AiFi’s innovative edge-computing solutions and look forward to their technology helping accelerate the deployment of 5G.”
Photo courtesy of AiFi Inc.
