Major tech companies aren’t just using AI to help you generate or summarize content — they also want you to use it for shopping. OpenAI, Google, and Amazon have heavily invested in AI assistants that research new product categories for you and suggest the right ones to buy.
Startups like Perplexity, Daydream, and Cherry have also built businesses around AI for product discovery. All these efforts have resulted in customers using more AI for shopping. Onton (previously known as Deft), an AI-powered furniture shopping platform, says it has seen its user base grow from 50,000 monthly active users to over 2 million monthly active users, serving millions of searches and image generations.
Fueled by this growth, the startup announced today that it has raised $7.5 million in a new funding round led by Footwork, with participation from Liquid 2, Parable Ventures, and 43, among others. This round brings the startup’s total funding to approximately $10 million.
Onton co-founders Zach Hudson and Alex Gunnarson Image Credits: Onton
Using this funding, the company wants to expand into new categories such as apparel and then eventually consumer electronics.
The company rebranded from Deft to Onton earlier this year, citing confusion around the original name and difficulty securing a premium domain.
Zach Hudson, co-founder of Onton, says that while large language models (LLMs) are good at guessing probable intent, they have not solved many problems in e-commerce. He added that the startup has observed that the average time a consumer takes to make a purchase decision has increased.
Image Credits: Onton
For its core technology, the company uses what’s called neuro-symbolic architecture. Hudson said that with this approach, the company can eliminate the hallucination problems of LLMs and provide better, logical search results. He added that the startup’s model can also learn information from the real world that might not necessarily be included in a product description.
Techcrunch event Join the Disrupt 2026 Waitlist Add yourself to the Disrupt 2026 waitlist to be first in line when Early Bird tickets drop. Past Disrupts have brought Google Cloud, Netflix, Microsoft, Box, Phia, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Hugging Face, Elad Gil, and Vinod Khosla to the stages — part of 250+ industry leaders driving 200+ sessions built to fuel your growth and sharpen your edge. Plus, meet the hundreds of startups innovating across every sector. Join the Disrupt 2026 Waitlist Add yourself to the Disrupt 2026 waitlist to be first in line when Early Bird tickets drop. Past Disrupts have brought Google Cloud, Netflix, Microsoft, Box, Phia, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Hugging Face, Elad Gil, and Vinod Khosla to the stages — part of 250+ industry leaders driving 200+ sessions built to fuel your growth and sharpen your edge. Plus, meet the hundreds of startups innovating across every sector. San Francisco | WAITLIST NOW
... continue reading