Loops raises $3.5 million to connect AI search, shopping help and virtual try-on

Loops is getting fresh capital to build a shopping experience where product search, advice and virtual try-on share one system, rather than operate as separate tools. On October 12, 2026, the company announced a $3.5 million seed round to develop that platform, support more customer deployments and take it into international markets.

SiliconANGLE reports that a16z Speedrun led the round. The other named investors are NTT Docomo, Connecticut Innovations, Alumni Ventures and Monday Capital. The financing backs an existing commerce platform, not a newly announced product.

The catalog connects the tools

The company traces its start to a purchase that never happened. Co-founders Ari Nazir and İlker Selim Zorluoğlu were in Bali when Zorluoğlu tried to buy a gift for his two-year-old daughter. He contacted the retailer, waited hours for a reply and abandoned the purchase. Loops says that experience pushed the founders to investigate the gap between shoppers asking questions in everyday language and stores relying on keyword searches and separate support queues.

Loops’ answer is to combine AI search, shopping assistance, customer operations, product enrichment and virtual try-on. The company says these functions work from the same product knowledge and business context, allowing information gathered in one part of the shopping journey to support another.

Product enrichment is the data-cleaning layer underneath that experience. It rewrites descriptions, fills in attributes and structures catalog information so customers and AI systems can understand it. Loops describes a feedback loop: cleaner product information supports search, search gives the assistant context, and customer conversations expose gaps in the catalog.

For shoppers, the intended interface is less technical. They describe what they want in plain language, then ask the built-in assistant questions while considering products. Loops says the assistant also carries service conversations across connected channels. Virtual try-on lets shoppers see a product on themselves before deciding to buy.

A retailer does not need five different AI products that each understand one slice of the customer. It needs one system that understands the catalog, the business and what the shopper is trying to do.

Ilker Selim Zorluoglu, president and co-founder of Loops

Retail adoption, with a sales caveat

Loops reports more than 70 customers and pilots, with 64% of pilots becoming paying customers. That total includes trial relationships; it is not a count of more than 70 paying retailers. The company also says its platform has handled millions of shopper experiences.

Turkish supermarket chain A101 uses Loops to help shoppers navigate its catalog and get assistance. In a company-published comparison, sessions involving Loops showed roughly 83% higher observed purchase conversion than a comparison segment. Loops explicitly describes the result as observational, not randomized. It shows an association with more purchases, but does not establish that the platform caused the difference.

Fashion retailer Mavi offers a more concrete example of the interface. It uses Loops for AI search and shopping assistance, letting customers describe a style, occasion or fit and receive guidance through the catalog. Loops’ supplied demonstration images show the Mavi assistant making outfit and size recommendations.

Funding deployments—and a wider ambition

The stated spending priorities are product development, customer deployment capacity and international expansion. Loops also describes commerce as its starting point, with financial services and energy next. It says it is building specialized small-language-model capabilities for tasks where industry knowledge and deployment constraints favor a focused model. Those are development ambitions, rather than announced launches for either sector.