Loops has raised $3.5 million in seed funding to scale its AI platform for brands and retailers, bringing search, product discovery, shopping assistance, customer operations, product enrichment, and virtual try-on into a unified system. The round included participation from a16z speedrun, NTT Docomo, Connecticut Innovations, Alumni Ventures, and Monday Capital. Loops plans to use the capital for product development, expanding customer deployment capacity, and international growth.
The company is building what it describes as an AI operating system for commerce, designed to replace the collection of disconnected AI tools that retailers increasingly use across different parts of the customer journey. Loops’ platform uses the same product data, business context, and customer information across multiple applications so improvements in one part of the system can strengthen others.
The platform begins with AI-powered search that allows shoppers to describe products in natural language rather than relying primarily on keywords, filters, or internal catalog structures. Its shopping assistant can then answer questions, make recommendations, and continue customer conversations across connected channels.
Underneath those customer-facing tools, Loops provides product enrichment technology that structures and enhances product attributes, descriptions, and other catalog information. The company said improving the quality of underlying product data enables its search and assistant products to provide more relevant responses.
Loops also offers virtual try-on capabilities designed to help shoppers visualize products and make purchasing decisions. The broader strategy is to connect discovery, assistance, product information, customer service, and visualization rather than requiring retailers to integrate several independent AI products.
Loops was founded by Ari Nazir and İlker Selim Zorluoğlu, with Yusuf Bahadir serving as CTO. The idea emerged after Zorluoğlu attempted to purchase a gift while traveling in Bali but abandoned the transaction after waiting hours for a retailer to answer a question. Nazir subsequently built the company’s first prototype over a weekend.
Loops now has more than 70 customers and pilots and has handled millions of shopper experiences. The company said 64% of its pilots have converted into paying customers.
Customers include Turkish supermarket chain A101 and fashion retailer Mavi. A101 uses Loops to help customers navigate its product catalog and receive assistance throughout the purchasing process. In a comparison published by Loops, sessions involving its platform generated approximately 83% higher observed purchase conversion than a comparison segment, though the company noted that the result was observational rather than based on a randomized test.
Mavi uses Loops for AI search and shopping assistance, allowing customers to describe what they want based on factors such as style, occasion, fit, and size and receive recommendations from the retailer’s catalog.
While commerce is the company’s initial market, Loops plans to apply the same vertical AI operating system approach to additional industries. Financial services and energy are next areas of focus, and the company is also developing specialized small-language-model capabilities for applications where domain expertise and deployment requirements favor more focused models.
KEY QUOTES:
“The biggest mistake we see is treating AI as a collection of features. A retailer does not need five different AI products that each understand one slice of the customer. It needs one system that understands the catalog, the business and what the shopper is trying to do. Commerce is where we are proving that model, and we think the same architecture can eventually become the AI operating layer for other industries as well.”
Ilker Selim Zorluoglu, President And Co-Founder Of Loops
“AI is changing the interface between companies and their customers, but the lasting platforms will be the ones that can make it work reliably inside real businesses. Loops is starting in commerce, where the link between a better AI experience and business value is unusually clear. Its pilot conversion and early customer expansion show brands want a platform that can own more of that journey.”
Fareed Mosavat, Investment Partner at a16z Speedrun
