Startup Firmly Raises $15 Million to Help Stores Sell Through AI Shopping Agents

A Seattle startup called firmly has raised $15 million to help online stores sell through AI shopping assistants. The goal is to let a store plug into many of these new channels without hiring engineers. The company announced the funding on Thursday, Nov. 5. It says analysts expect AI-driven traffic to U.S. retail sites to grow 130% year over year this holiday season.

The problem it targets

Every AI assistant, marketplace, social platform and agent tool has its own way of asking a store what it sells and how to buy it. A store has to connect its product list, stock levels, prices, payments and checkout. Doing that once is hard for many merchants. Doing it for every new channel is harder. Firmly says its platform does that work one time on the store's behalf.

Who is backing it

The $15 million is a Series A, which is an early funding round. Squarepoint Capital led it. J.P. Morgan Payments, Mastercard and Samsung Next joined as strategic investors, along with several other firms. Firmly has now raised about $20 million in total. Mastercard also named firmly a partner in September, when it launched Agent Connect, a single connection linking merchants, AI agents, digital platforms and payment providers.

How it works

Firmly says its platform, called firmly Connect, links to a store's existing systems and shows its catalog, product pages and checkout to each destination through one connection. The store stays the seller on every order. It keeps its payment provider, customer relationships and sales data. The company says the platform can already reach more than 11 million merchants, representing more than $900 billion in total sales.

Some AI agents shop by browsing a website and clicking through checkout like a person. Others use an agreed set of rules to ask for real items, prices and stock, then get a confirmed order back. Standards for the second approach, including Google's Universal Commerce Protocol and Mastercard's Agent Connect, are still being adopted. There are several of them. Firmly says it bridges both styles.

A new chat tool for store sites

Alongside the funding, firmly launched Ask Agent. Merchants can add it to their own websites with one line of code. Shoppers describe what they want in plain language and get suggestions based on the store's live catalog, prices and stock. They can finish checkout inside the chat. Early deployments showed conversion rate gains of up to 18% and average order value gains of up to 23%, according to the company.

What is not known yet

The results and traffic forecast come from the company's press release, and the figures are described as early. The material does not say what firmly charges, how many stores use Ask Agent, or which AI assistants are connected today. Store owners may want those answers before committing.