Stor.ai (formerly Self Point), announced today that it has raised $21 million in an extended Series A round of funding. The round was led by Meitav Dash and Mizrahi Tefahot, with participation from Kli Capital.
The Tel Aviv, Israel-based Stor.ai offers a suite of tools that help grocers of any size deploy their own online shopping services. Stor.ai’s software helps manage customer data, inventory, payment and order fulfillment.
Stor.ai’s funding comes amidst a wave of capital being poured into digital grocery-related startups around the world. Since the beginning of the year we’ve seen the following raises:
- Instacart (U.S.) – $265 million
- Rohlik (Czech Republic) – $230 million
- Flink (Germany) – $52 million
- Crisp (Netherlands) – $36 million
- Good Eggs (U.S.) – $100 million
- Weezy (U.K.) – $20 million
- Rosie (U.S.) – $10 million
- Imperfect Foods (U.S.) – $110 million
- Xingsheng Youxuan (China) $2 billion
In addition to startup funding, we’ve also seen increased investment in e-commerce operations from all the major grocery retailers. Walmart is working with three different vendors to add automated fulfillment to dozens of its locations. Albertsons is expanding its own use of automated fulfillment, testing robotic curbside pickup kiosks, and even piloting remote controlled robot delivery. And Stop & Shop is experimenting with its own locker pickup pilot in Boston.
The reason for all of this investment is the pandemic, which spurred record numbers of people into online grocery shopping. In January, grocery delivery and pickup hit $7.1 billion in sales. And while vaccines and warmer months may cause a market correction as people feel more comfortable shopping in-store, online grocery is projected to hit $250 billion in sales and be 21.5 percent of total grocery shopping by 2025.
For its part, Stor.ai says it will use the new funding to build out new features to its core offering, scale up its growth in North America and enter new markets in Latin America and Europe.
