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Azoma has received an investment from dunnhumby ventures, linking the startup with a retail data and technology group that works with retailers and consumer goods brands.
The funding will be used to expand Azoma's platform, which measures how AI shopping agents discover, interpret and recommend products. The next stage of development will focus on linking AI visibility to recommended actions and incremental revenue for customers, including L'Oréal, Unilever and Mars.
Azoma operates in what it calls agentic commerce optimisation, a segment focused on how products appear in responses from shopping assistants and general-purpose AI tools. Its platform tracks retail shopping agents such as Alexa for Shopping, Walmart Sparky, Target Shopping Agent and AI Lazzie, as well as assistants including ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Meta Muse AI and Siri.
The investment also gives dunnhumby a closer role in Azoma's business. Leo Nagdas, Head of dunnhumby ventures, has joined as an advisor to the board.
AI shopping
The move comes as retailers and brands take a closer look at how generative AI tools influence purchasing decisions. Azoma argues that AI shopping assistants are becoming a direct route to purchase and that companies need a way to measure those channels with the same scrutiny they apply to shelf placement and other established retail metrics.
Data released by Azoma helps explain why the issue is drawing attention. Its analysis of tens of millions of AI responses in the second quarter of 2026 found that earned or social media accounted for 86.5% of the citations behind Alexa for Shopping's recommendations and 76% of those behind Walmart Sparky's. ChatGPT, by contrast, drew more heavily on retailer sources, at 37.1%.
That suggests many of the answers presented to shoppers are assembled from sources outside a brand's direct control. For consumer packaged goods companies and retailers, the challenge is not only tracking where AI systems draw information from, but also linking those outputs to sales.
Azoma argues this is one of the main gaps in current answer engine optimisation and generative engine optimisation tools. In particular, brands need to know which prompts matter and whether changes to content, product data or third-party sources have a measurable commercial effect.
dunnhumby, which has built its business around retail and customer data, said the relationship should help address that issue for both retailers and brands. The group has a record of backing early-stage retail technology companies in areas including category management, consumer insights, loyalty and retail media.
Expansion plans
Azoma has offices in Toronto and London, while most of its clients are in the US. Its customer list includes major consumer brands such as L'Oréal, Unilever, Mars, Beiersdorf and Reckitt.
The company presents its platform as a layer between brands and the AI systems that increasingly shape product discovery. It combines measurement with recommendations to improve how products are represented in product data, content and third-party sources used by AI models.
For dunnhumby, the investment fits a broader strategy of using startup partnerships to bring newer technologies to retailer clients. It said the relationship will help it support retailers seeking to improve customer-facing chat agents, while also helping brands improve discoverability and relevance in AI-led shopping environments.
Max Sinclair, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Azoma, set out the reasoning behind the deal. "dunnhumby has decades of expertise helping brands and retailers leverage customer data insight," he said.
"Agentic Commerce is the next frontier. dunnhumby understands this, and brands and retailers' current data blindness better than anyone. Their investment is a vote of confidence in our current solution and shared vision. In time, their data will help us demonstrate to the world's largest retailers and consumer brands the tangible value of agent-driven recommendations. Agentic commerce is a $9 trillion opportunity, and this is how we will continue to define the category," Sinclair added.
Leo Nagdas, Head of dunnhumby ventures, described the gap he believes the company is addressing. "AI shopping assistants are rewriting the path to purchase, and today retailers and CPGs have no reliable way to connect what an agent recommends to a sale," he said.
"Azoma is a leader in the emerging agentic commerce space, and the team combines real depth in AI with a practical grasp of how retail actually works. Backing companies like Azoma is how we bring emerging technology to our clients as consumer behaviours and retail ecosystems keep changing," he added.