Loops announced a $3.5 million seed round to scale what it calls an AI operating system for commerce, the San Francisco–based startup said Oct. 12, 2026. Investors in the round include a16z Speedrun, NTT Docomo, Connecticut Innovations, Alumni Ventures and Monday Capital. The company said the funding will support product development, customer deployment capacity and international expansion.
AI operating system for commerce: one system, not many features
Loops was founded to collapse multiple fragmented AI tools into a single, continuous shopping journey that understands shoppers, the product catalog and the retailer’s business context. “The biggest mistake we see is treating AI as a collection of features,” said Ilker Selim Zorluoglu, President and Co-Founder of Loops. “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. Commerce is where we are proving that model, and we think the same architecture can eventually become the AI operating layer for other industries as well.”
How Loops works
Loops follows shoppers from initial discovery to purchase. Shoppers can describe what they want in plain language and Loops’ AI search surfaces relevant products without relying on keywords, filters or a retailer’s internal catalog logic. A built-in shopping assistant answers questions, helps people decide and carries service conversations across connected channels. Underpinning those features is product enrichment, which the company says rewrites descriptions, attributes and catalog data to make every product legible to customers and AI systems, and a virtual try-on that lets shoppers see products on themselves before buying.
Early customer traction and evidence
Loops says it now works with over 70 customers and pilots and has handled millions of shopper experiences, with sixty-four percent of pilots converting into paying customers. Turkish supermarket chain A101 uses Loops to help customers navigate its catalog and assist them through the buying journey; in Loops’ published comparison, sessions involving the platform showed roughly 83% higher observed purchase conversion than the comparison segment, a result the company notes is observational rather than a randomized measure. Fashion retailer Mavi uses Loops for AI search and shopping assistance to let customers describe desired style, occasion or fit and receive guided recommendations.
Origins and team
The company began after a failed purchase experience in Bali: co-founders Ari Nazir and İlker Selim Zorluoğlu discovered that slow support and keyword-based ecommerce search were failing customers who already described what they wanted in plain language. Nazir built the first prototype in a weekend. The company’s leadership shown with CTO Yusuf Bahadir includes founders Ari Nazir and İlker Selim Zorluoglu.
Investor perspective and roadmap
“AI is changing the interface between companies and their customers, but the lasting platforms will be the ones that can make it work reliably inside real businesses,” said Fareed Mosavat, Investment Partner at a16z Speedrun. Loops is starting in commerce with the stated aim of turning its commerce platform into a blueprint for industry-specific AI operating systems. The company said financial services and energy are next targets and that it is building specialized small-language-model capabilities for domain-specific tasks.
Products and positioning
Loops markets enterprise products including AI Search & Shopping Assistants, Marketplace Assistants, Product Enrichment and Virtual Try-On. The company describes itself as a venture-backed enterprise AI firm that builds agentic commerce and automation systems for e-commerce brands. For more information, it lists its website as https://loopsai.com/.
The company framed commerce as the first operating system it plans to build, with the goal of making companies AI-native by weaving AI into business workflows rather than bolting on isolated features.
