AI ecommerce startup Onton raises 7.5 million US dollars

AI ecommerce startup Onton has successfully raised 7.5 million US dollars to reimagine and streamline the online shopping experience.

In a seed funding round led by Footwork, with participation from Liquid 2, Parable Ventures, 43, and more, the funding round brings Onton’s total funding to approximately 10 million US dollars. Onton aims to use the funding to expand its product, scale its team, and increase its global footprint.

The AI startup offers a new interface with a novel neurosymbolic AI foundation that learns more about the world with each search, thereby rapidly increasing accuracy and enabling people to search and make a purchase within minutes rather than days.

“We are building the future of decision making online,” said Zach Hudson, CEO and Co-Founder of Onton, in a statement. “People deserve a way to shop that feels intelligent, transparent, and effortless. Onton is designed to remove the friction that slows everyone down and to give users absolute confidence in their choices.”

Onton lets users search via natural language, images, or both, consolidating web information into unified product listings. Creative tools like Imagine and Surfaces allow users to visualize desired items and instantly find purchasable matches. So far, the platform has achieved a conversion rate triple the industry average, with over 20 percent of users being weekly active.

The idea for Onton came about when co-founders Alex and Zach united after recognizing their complementary approaches. Alex spent 30 hours searching for a specific couch and identified widespread frustration, while Zach had built Rcmmd by studying online review trust. After meeting at YC Startup School, they launched Onton, won Pioneer, joined On Deck’s fifth Fellowship, and scaled to 1 million+ monthly active users, growing from four employees in early 2025 to ten, with five more planned.

As the online shopping landscape continues to transform, auto-generated, unverified content proliferates, brands create closed ecosystems, trusted recommendation sources vanish, and consumers expect AI-powered, intelligent search rather than filtered lists. To address these changes, new standards for relevance, accuracy, and trust need to be established. 

Users report a dramatic impact when using Onton: finding high-quality products that match their interests without lengthy research, gaining confidence in unique items, cutting decision cycles by months, and completing home projects with immediately purchasable products. In addition, power users conduct 100-plus searches and generate monthly.

In the near future, Onton plans category expansion into apparel and electronics based on user demand, while refining its knowledge graph, scaling data pipelines, and developing customizable individual search engines. The long-term vision for Onton is to become a global decision-making tool for any product, category, or country.