AI startup Onton has raised $7.5 million in seed funding as it works to transform how consumers discover and choose products online. The round was led by Footwork with participation from Liquid 2, Parable Ventures, 43, and additional investors, bringing the company’s total funding to about $10 million.
The San Francisco-based company is building an intelligent product discovery engine to reduce the typical 79-day shopping journey to a single day. Onton’s neurosymbolic AI foundation is engineered to interpret and structure product information across the internet, helping more than two million monthly users cut through cluttered search results, conflicting reviews, and fragmented online listings.
Onton’s platform allows users to search using natural language or images while aggregating data from across the web into unified product views. This enables shoppers to evaluate options without switching between multiple sites. The company said its conversion rate is already three times higher than industry benchmarks, and more than 20 percent of users are active weekly.
The startup’s technology has gained traction as consumers struggle with unverified and automatically generated online content. Traditional e-commerce and search systems have not kept pace with the scale and complexity of product data, and advertising-driven ranking models frequently diminish relevance. Onton is positioning its platform as an intelligent assistant that can provide trustworthy, transparent, and personalized search results.
The company traces its origins to the founders’ own frustrations. Co-founder Alex spent more than 30 hours searching for a mid-century gray couch with wood trim, only to learn that many shoppers face similar challenges. Co-founder Zach Hudson had previously been studying trust in online reviews and building Rcmmd, an AI-driven product research tool. After meeting at a YC Startup School event, the pair collaborated on early prototypes, won Pioneer, joined On Deck, and scaled the product from one million monthly active users at the start of 2025 to more than two million today. Onton currently employs ten people and plans to hire at least five more.
Onton intends to expand beyond home decor and furniture into categories such as apparel and electronics. The company will also continue developing its knowledge graph, improving its data pipeline, and preparing a customizable search engine that adapts to each user. Onton’s long-term objective is to become a global decision-making platform that can support any product in any market.
KEY QUOTE:
“We are building the future of decision making online. People deserve a way to shop that feels intelligent, transparent, and effortless. Onton is designed to remove the friction that slows everyone down and to give users absolute confidence in their choices.”
Zach Hudson, CEO and Co-Founder of Onton
