AI is changing how people shop. Consumers are increasingly turning to AI assistants to research products, compare options, and decide what to buy.
For merchants, that's an enormous opportunity, along with a practical challenge. Every new AI assistant, marketplace or shopping platform is another place to sell. But connecting to each one can take serious engineering, because catalogs, inventory, payments, and checkout all have to work together.
At firmly, we believe merchants should be able to sell in every new destination without rebuilding their technology for each one.
$15 million to build what's next
Today we're announcing a $15 million Series A led by Squarepoint Capital, with participation from J.P. Morgan Payments, Mastercard, Samsung NEXT and other investors. We're also launching Ask Agent, a conversational shopping experience that brings AI-powered product discovery directly to merchants' own websites.
DealsExclusive: JPMorgan and Mastercard back AI shopping startup Firmly
Read it on Axios Pro (subscription).
When I spoke with Axios Pro, I made one point I want every merchant to hear:
You're in the business of selling products, not managing protocols. That's the problem we built firmly to take off your plate.
One integration. Every protocol. Every surface. Zero complexity.
Our mission has always been to let merchants sell wherever their customers shop, with zero complexity.
Through firmly Connect, merchants become transactable across AI assistants, marketplaces, social platforms, and other destinations with zero merchant engineering. The merchant whitelists firmly and agrees terms, and firmly integrates into the ecommerce platform the merchant already runs. Merchants stay the merchant of record and keep their payment provider, brand, data, and customer relationships.
How we connect matters too. firmly connects to the systems behind the storefront, with the merchant's agreement, rather than sending a browser agent to click through pages. Prices, inventory, and checkout come straight from the merchant's own systems.
And this infrastructure already supports real commerce. Furniture.com runs a multi-merchant cart and checkout on firmly. Wizard, an AI shopping platform, offers in-chat checkout against a live catalog. RetailMeNot, part of Ziff Davis, runs branded commerce with firmly. All three are live today.
Bringing AI-powered shopping to merchants' own websites
We're also bringing agentic commerce to merchants' own websites with Ask Agent. Shoppers describe what they're looking for in plain language and get recommendations and answers from the store's own catalog and policies, with real-time pricing and inventory. Then they buy in the merchant's own checkout. In-chat checkout, order status, and loyalty are available per store.
Ask Agent installs with one line of script, and firmly handles most of the setup.
Scaling what's next
This funding takes firmly Connect to more merchants and more destinations: AI agents, marketplaces, social networks, and advertising platforms.
AI keeps creating new ways for consumers to discover and buy products, and the number of destinations keeps growing. Merchants should be able to take advantage of every one without investing in new technology or integrations each time the landscape changes.
We're building toward a future where any merchant can sell in any destination, reaching customers wherever and however they choose to shop.
Thank you to our investors, our partners, the merchants who trust us with their stores, and the firmly team. We're just getting started.
— Kumar