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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Standard Cognition

Standard Cognition Raises $150M Series C for its Cashierless Checkout

Cashierless checkout startup Standard Cognition announced today that it has raised a $150 million Series C round of funding. The round was led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, with participation from existing investors CRV, EQT Ventures and TI Platform Management, along with new investors SK Networks and others. This brings the total amount of funding raised by Standard to $236 million.

Standard Cognition creates cashierless checkout experiences for retailers using a system of cameras, computer vision and artificial intelligence (AI). Once installed and integrated with a payment system, customers can walk in, grab what they want, and leave without needing to scan items or wait in a checkout line.

Shopping in seconds with Standard, the world's most advanced autonomous checkout solution

This round of funding is far and away the largest we’ve seen for a cashierless checkout startup. Similar startups that retrofit stores with cameras and AI include Grabango ($32 million), Trigo ($89 million), and Zippin ($12 million). Also worth mentioning is Accel Robotics, which raised $30 million from SoftBank the company, not SoftBank Vision Fund.

In its press announcement, Standard said this new funding will help the company scale up its solution. Standard said it has already been working with customers including Alimentation Couche-Tard, Inc. (parent company of global convenience store brand “Circle K”) and Compass Group. Standard said it will outfit “hundreds” of checkout-free stores this year and has a goal of more than 50,000 stores over the next five years.

It is an understatement to say that it’s been a busy year so far for cashierless checkout. Just today, cashierless startup AiFi announced a partnership with Dutch convenience store chain Wundermart that includes plans to open up 1,000 checkout-free stores. Previously, New Zealand-based IMAGR partnered with Japanese retailer H2O, Berlin-based Nomitri came out of stealth, and Zippin launched a checkout-free store in a hotel in Japan.

A big reason for all this activity (and investment) is the ongoing global pandemic. Retailers are looking for ways to alter the shopping experience in a COVID world, which includes reducing the amount of human-to-human interaction the happen at the store. Removing the cashier removes one vector of transmission, and removing the checkout line altogether means that fewer people congregate inside a store.

In other words, expect to see more cashierless checkout announcements (and investments) in the coming months.

Cashierless Tech Consolidation: Standard Cognition Buys Checkout Technologies

Standard Cognition, a San Francisco-based cashierless checkout startup, has acquired aptly named Italian company Checkout Technologies, which also does autonomous retail. TechCrunch was first to report the news. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Standard Cognition has raised $86 million in funding, while Checkout had raised just €1.3M ($1.42 USD). Standard Cognition CEO Jordan Fisher told TechCrunch that the two companies had been talking since the middle of last year and were in the final diligence stage of the deal when the COVID-19 pandemic struck Italy particularly hard.

The global COVID-19 crisis could actually help spur adoption of cashierless checkout at retail. The technology allows shoppers to walk into a store, grab what they want and get charged automatically upon exit. This type of contactless transaction reduces the number of human-to-human interactions happening in a store, which could help protect store workers and put shoppers more at ease with in-store shopping.

Fisher also told TechCrunch that he expects to see consolidation in the autonomous checkout space. There is certainly a bevy of startups bringing their cashierless solutions to market. In addition to Standard Cognition and Checkout Technologies, there is Trigo, Grabango, Zippin, Caper, Shopic, Swiftly, Skip, AiFi, and Accel Robotics. Not to mention Amazon, which is the grandaddy of cashierless checkout and will be licensing out its technology. And while Walmart’s IRL store hasn’t implemented cashierless checkout yet, it has banks of cameras monitoring in-store inventory, and it’s not too huge a leap to think they will roll out cashierless options soon.

We started to see some grocery retailers go public with their cashierless partnerships last year. Trigo is at Tesco and Shufersal, Grabango with Giant Eagle, and Zippin with Lojas Americanas. But the big impediment to implementing these cashierless technologies, at least at large grocery chains, is that they need to work at scale and right away. There’s still a learning curve and workflow adoption of cashierless checkout that needs to happen for most consumers.

But the coronavirus pandemic is accelerating the adoption of certain technologies around food, especially if they help promote the safety of workers and shoppers alike. Cashierless checkout could be here in a meaningful way sooner than we expected.

Standard Cognition Raises $35M Series B for its Cashierless Checkout Tech

Standard Cognition, one of a host of startups looking to bring cashierless checkout to the retail experience, announced today that it has raised a $35 million Series B round of funding. The round was lead by EQT Ventures fund, with participation from existing investors Initialized Capital, CRV and Y Combinator. This brings the total amount raised by Standard Cognition to $86.1 million.

Standard Cognition retrofits retailers with Amazon Go-like grab-and-go capabilities. Using computer vision and artificial intelligence, it keeps track of items shoppers take from the shelves and automatically charges them via mobile app when they exit the store.

With this Series B round, Standard Cognition now has a far bigger warchest than the other players in the cashierless checkout space, which breaks down as follows:

However, the one thing Standard Cognition doesn’t have right now is a publicly named customer. Standard Cognition opened its own proof-of-concept store in San Francisco last year, and according to today’s press release, “The company has signed several retail customers and is deploying for two already in multiple locations, with scheduled go-live dates in Q3 and Q4 of this year.” But Standard Cognition has to name names.

This is a fairly common scenario: most startups making cashierless checkout solutions can’t actually name their actual customers right now. In fact, the only two that have done so at this point are Grabango with Giant Eagle and Trigo Vision with Shufersal in Israel. The reluctance of retailers to officially announce a partnerships is understandable as they typically move slowly with such technology implementations, wanting to make sure they pick a solution that can scale appropriately.

The cashierless checkout sector is still wide open, and with today’s big raise, Standard Cognition has the money to withstand the competition.

Standard Cognition Raises $40M for its Cashierless Tech

Standard Cognition announced yesterday that it has raised $40 million Series A round of funding to fuel its cashierless technology solution which creates Amazon Go-like shopping experiences. The round was lead by Initialized Capital and brings the total amount raised by Standard Cognition to $51 million.

Amazon kicked off the whole walk-into-a-store-grab-what-you-want-and-walk-out payment system with the launch of its first Amazon Go store in Seattle earlier this year. As we approach the end of 2018, Amazon continues to roll out these stores at a rapid pace, putting up new ones in Chicago, San Francisco and soon New York (to go along with its flashy new half-HQ2).

Standard Cognition operates a little differently; it’s not trying to build its own armada of retail locations. Instead it provides its technology to third-party retailers who want to open up their own cashierless stores. Standard Cognition opened up a store in San Francisco earlier this year to show off its technology, and says it has agreements with four retailers across Asia, North America and Europe.

It looks like 2019 will be the year cashierless checkout will start to see some real traction in the marketplace. Sam’s Club just debuted its first cashierless store. Walmart is reportedly working with Microsoft on cashierless retail. 7-Eleven recently introduced its attempt at cashierless convenience. And just this week it was announced that Shufersal, Israel’s largest supermarket chain, will install Trigo Vision’s cashierless tech across all of its 272 stores.

We’ve used the Seattle Amazon Go store a few times and found the experience to be seamless and oddly natural for such a new concept. With so many competitors in the market, and so many retailers not wanting to cede the future of retail to Amazon, expect more funding for cashierless startups and more stores rolling out the technology throughout next year.