Top Retail Technology Startups in 2027

RetailNext is a retail analytics company focused on developing technology that enables store owners to measure store performance, identify opportunities for growth, implement strategies that drive results, increase savings, and boost bottom-line sales. With a comprehensive list of retail marketing solutions and in-store analytical services, RetailNext is helping stores maximize the efficiency and efficacy of marketing and sales tactics.

Pindrop® Protect provides a risk score and call intelligence to the call center in the first few seconds of each call. The risk score — along with the analysis of the caller’s voice, device, and behavior — is provided to the call center’s fraud analyst team for further investigation. Pindrop’s proprietary machine learning algorithms then use feedback from the investigation to maximize solution performance. Pindrop® Passport evaluates call center interactions in real-time to passively authenticate legitimate customers. Passport runs in the background of every call, combining patented Phoneprinting™ technology with proprietary Deep Voice™ biometrics to determine if a caller has the right device, voice, and behavior to access an account. Whether callers use voice or touch-tone interactions within the IVR — or opt to speak to an agent — Pindrop credentials follow customers across the lifecycle of each call.

Nash enables businesses to reliably deliver. The company exists to democratize local delivery for business across all industries and sizes. Nash uses the power of technology to build user-friendly infrastructure and smart interfaces that enable all merchants to exceed the rapidly evolving expectations of today and tomorrow's consumer.

Placer.ai is a fast-growing big data startup led by seasoned executives and repeat entrepreneurs who are building the world's first "Google Analytics for the physical world" platform. Placer.ai’s platform provides instant visibility into any property in the U.S., presenting accurate details about visitation patterns and demographic breakdowns of visitors. Placer.ai’s customers can see where visitors have been before, where they go afterwards, where they typically go for sports, entertainment, groceries, etcetera, and what their interests are. Placer.ai's A.I.-based SaaS platform replaces archaic solutions such as manual surveys, installed cameras and other people counting systems, thus creating a blue ocean market of more than $100B. Placer.ai has grown 3x year-over-year for the past 3 years, counting more than 500 paying customers across a range of industries, including 2 of the world’s top 10 retailers, 2 of the top 10 CPG firms worldwide, a world’s top hospitality firm, 2 of the world’s top 10 commercial real estate (CRE) firms and 2 of the world’s top multinational asset managers and hedge funds. Placer has just raised its $50M Series B funding.

Crave is redefining how retailers make smarter decisions with every shopper in every fitting room. Until now, retailers have been operating their fitting rooms blind leaving them with no way to manage customer experiences and satisfaction. Crave make it easy for retailers to modernize their fitting rooms with digital screens and equip sales associates with mobile solutions to drive customer engagement and conversion.

Happy Returns is transforming e-commerce by solving the #1 pain point of online shopping: returns. We do this by providing the method of returns that customers overwhelmingly prefer – in person returns – through a network of physical Return Bars staffed by friendly, highly-trained Returnistas located in premier shopping centers, corporate and college campuses and other convenient spots. With Happy Returns, shoppers get a return method that is easy, friendly, free, involves no packing or shipping, and provides an immediate refund. Retailers using Happy Returns save money through aggregation and enjoy increased conversions and customer loyalty and satisfaction. Join the Happy Returns team as we make returns beautiful and usher in the next generation of happy shopping.

We have mobile apps to connect consumers to retailers via two distinct platforms. Our platforms give retailers the ability to harness the power of mobile applications by providing branding/content on our platform, which we translate to a branded app in the App Store and Google Play Store. Our Retail Media Network platform serves brand content inside the mobile app directly to consumers.

Flatlay is the end to end social commerce automation platform for brands, creatives & customers. We provide publishing tools that help anyone start a digital storefront in seconds codelessly while empowering brands and retailers to activate community and content loyalty programs. The platform has automation processes around product annotation and content delivery through a publishing scheduler helping both ends monetize the relationship. By aligning incentives with customers, fans and followers - we help to instill a Content Loyalty Program for brands to become digitally native and own the DTC relationship. Flatlay provides a suite of publishing tools allowing users to codelessly create a digital storefront in seconds. Through content driven commerce, the social marketplace network further empowers the creator economy. Users build shop-able collections to generate revenue from affiliate sales with the ability to be sponsored directly by brands for customized content. This is all done through an automated SaaS platform where brands & retailers tap into the campaign work-flow system. Clients effectively match with the right creative brand advocates at scale using the power of machine learning in a self-serve custom relationship management portal. Our vision is to evolve the way commerce is conducted online by removing intermediaries cutting into margins while empowering brands and retailers the most streamlined way to go direct to consumer. By building a social commerce marketplace, we evolve the way that e-commerce is done by placing content at the forefront and eliminating many of the headaches associated with logistics.

Cooklist is the AI grocery‑intelligence platform powering meal planning and shopping for millions of consumers across our consumer app and white‑label enterprise suite. Our mission is to combine the intelligence of a personal shopper, chef, and nutritionist to help people save time, eat better, and enjoy happier lives. We’re profitable, process billions of dollars in transactions at the nation’s largest retailers, and our mobile experiences reach millions of people. We’re backed by Techstars, Mercury Fund, and industry leaders including the former CTO of Kroger and the Chief Product Officer of Amazon Fresh.

Entrupy aims to fight the global problem of counterfeits to become the de-facto standard for instant authentication. Entrupy is a hardware-enabled SaaS company that uses computer vision algorithms and microscopy to bring trust to transactions of high-value physical goods. Currently in use by thousands of secondary resellers and marketplaces worldwide, Entrupy provides the only scalable technology capable of authenticating luxury products from brands such as Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Hermès, among others. The service launched in 2016, following four years of research led by Ashlesh Sharma, Vidyuth Srinivasan and Lakshminarayanan Subramanian, Professor at New York University. Investors include DG Lab Fund, deep learning pioneer and Facebook AI Research (FAIR) director, Yann LeCun, serial entrepreneur and investor Zach Coelius, cloud computing pioneer and Google VP of Infrastructure Eric Brewer, and Japanese venture capital firm, Accord Ventures.