Grabango is a provider of checkout-free technology that retrofits into existing grocery and convenience stores to enable customers to skip the checkout line. Its system uses computer vision to identify items as they are picked up, counts those items, and sends a receipt to the shopper’s phone. The platform is described as comprehensive and fault-tolerant, capable of accurately processing millions of simultaneous transactions and placing no limits on who can enter the store or how shelving is configured. Grabango has been deployed with large partners including Giant Eagle, where the system handles over 15,000 SKUs and tens of thousands of transactions each month, and it has signed five retail partners each with over $1 billion in revenue, including a global top-10 grocer and a Fortune-25 multinational. The company has filed 38 patents, some of which have already been awarded, and says its retrofit installs occur with no disruption to store operations. Grabango plans further store deployments in 2021 (including four additional Giant Eagle GetGo locations by year-end) and will use new capital to expand its engineering team and hire more developers. Grabango offers a cashierless, camera- and ML-based checkout system that can run largely on-premises via a dedicated PC and integrates with existing POS and store-operations platforms. Its proprietary item-tracking cameras are designed to be lightweight and inexpensive to manufacture, and the company says its algorithms achieve 99.9% object-recognition accuracy. Current deployments span stores from about 2,000 to 50,000 square feet, though the system is designed to scale to stores with more than 100,000 square feet and to track hundreds of shoppers and hundreds of thousands of SKUs. The solution preserves conventional cashier options (cash, cards, SNAP) while offering an opt-in cashierless experience via a Grabango app and QR-code exit flow. Grabango reports 29 patents related to checkout-free technologies and claims clients that together serve over 600 million shoppers per year. The company has raised a total of $32 million to date and says it is targeting U.S. grocers and convenience-store chains, aiming to win top national accounts in the coming years. Grabango provides checkout-free shopping systems for existing brick-and-mortar stores using computer vision and machine learning to maintain a virtual shopping basket and automatically complete checkout without requiring a smartphone. The company was founded in 2016 and is based in Berkeley, Calif. Grabango has signed four major U.S. store chains that together generate billions in revenue, serve more than 600 million shopper visits per year, and cover 29 million square feet. Store deployments have ranged from 2,500 to 50,000 square feet per location. The company has filed 17 patents protecting its checkout-free technology and processes and has grown a hand-picked team to 37 employees and contractors. It plans to use the new funding to grow its product development team and expand client store deployments.

Total raised

$66M

Funding rounds

3

Latest round

Series B

Latest activity

Jun 2021