ReFiBuy raises $13.6M seed round to help brands compete in AI-driven shopping era

A Raleigh e-commerce startup led by Scot Wingo has raised a $13.6M seed round

A Raleigh startup trying to help e-commerce companies navigate new AI-based tech and trends has raised $13.6 million in a seed round from investors. Why it matters: The company, called ReFiBuy, is the latest startup from Scot Wingo, a serial entrepreneur and investor who is influential in the Triangle's startup scene. * His previous ventures include the e-commerce company ChannelAdvisor, the on-demand car-care company Spiffy and the Triangle Tweener Fund. Driving the news: The new round, led by NewRoad Capital Partners, will allow the company to expand its sales and marketing and engineering team, Wingo told Axios. * The company has around 20 employees based in downtown Raleigh and will likely hire another 10 in the coming months. What it does: Increasingly, e-commerce is being done through the lens of artificial intelligence. Humans are no longer the only ones searching for things to buy online, but also AI agents. * Previously, companies focused on how to get their products to show up on search engines. But now the goal is also to surface in results of agentic shopping engines, which let AI autonomously research, compare and buy products. * ReFiBuy builds tools that help brands make sure their products are considered by AI buying agents and also consults with companies to keep up with trends in the space. By the numbers: Between 30% to 45% of U.S. consumers now use generative AI to research items to purchase, according to research from Bain, whether that is using ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity or Google search, which now also uses AI. What they're saying: "We want to make sure every fact about your product is known by these [large language models], so that they can almost be an outsourced sales representative for you," Wingo told Axios.

ReFiBuy Raises $13.6M Oversubscribed Seed Round to Accelerate Agentic Commerce

NewRoad Capital Partners leads Series Seed as ReFiBuy helps brands and retailers compete in AI-powered shopping RALEIGH, N.C., May 5, 2026 (Newswire.com) - ReFiBuy, the Agentic Commerce Optimization (ACO) platform for brands and retailers, today announced $13.6 million in oversubscribed Series Seed funding led by NewRoad Capital Partners. The round includes new investors Ridge Ventures, Silicon Road Ventures, Incubate Fund, and VELA Partners, with continued support from G20 Ventures, Commerce Ventures, Knoll Ventures, and retail industry angel investors. The capital will be used to scale ReFiBuy's Commerce Intelligence Engine and accelerate go-to-market as brands and retailers prepare their catalogs for AI-driven shopping. The funding lands at a defining moment for commerce. AI shopping agents are quickly becoming a new interface consumers use to research, find, and buy products. Bain & Company projects agentic commerce could reach $300 billion to $500 billion in U.S. sales by 2030, representing 15% to 25% of total online retail. At the same time, traffic from traditional search is declining. Brands and retailers now face a rare dynamic: a new discovery surface is pulling shoppers in while their legacy discovery channel pushes them out. Most product catalogs were not built for how shopping agents make decisions. They were built for human browsing, marketplace feeds, and keyword-driven discovery. ReFiBuy solves the mismatch at its source: the catalog layer where shopping agents decide what a product is, who needs it, and whether to recommend it. ReFiBuy's Commerce Intelligence Engine turns product data into an always-on system for Agentic Commerce Optimization. It evaluates how shopping agents interpret each SKU; generates the expanded product context needed for conversational discovery; enriches catalogs with optimized data; syncs and distributes updates across commerce endpoints; and monitors performance over time. This closed loop keeps product data ready as agentic commerce evolves. "This Seed round represents both the strong interest from the investment community in Agentic Commerce and solidifies our leadership position in the space," said Scot Wingo, CEO and Co-founder of ReFiBuy. "We plan to leverage the Seed to accelerate our platform as well as our go-to-market motion to match the urgency our customers and prospects are feeling from this tectonic change." "Product data is becoming the most important infrastructure layer in commerce, and ReFiBuy is building it," said Stefan Sterns, Partner at NewRoad Capital Partners. "Scot and his team bring exactly the combination we back: deep operator experience in commerce, a clear-eyed view of where the market is going, and a product already delivering results for sophisticated brands and retailers." "Retailers and brands are struggling to make sure every one of their SKUs is relevant for the millions of unique LLM-based queries," said Matt Nichols, Partner at Commerce Ventures. "Fortunately, Scot has been building solutions for this customer set for decades, and knows what it takes to optimize product data for maximum visibility and sales." "Scot and the team have turned ReFiBuy into the go-to source for the emerging agentic commerce community, while making fantastic progress from both a platform and go-to-market standpoint," said Bob Hower, Partner at G20 Ventures. "We're thrilled to continue on this journey, now with this fantastic group of investors behind us." "ReFiBuy is innovating at a pace that is rare at this stage, and they are doing it with a team whose commerce operator background shows up in every product decision," said Alex Rosen, Managing Partner of Ridge Ventures. "That combination of technical velocity and deep market understanding is why we wanted to be part of this round." "The part of the commerce stack that wins every platform shift is the one closest to product data," said Sid Mookerji, Managing Partner of Silicon Road Ventures. "ReFiBuy is working at that layer with a team that understands what it takes to operate at catalog scale across thousands of SKUs and hundreds of retail partners." ReFiBuy is in production with leading brands and retailers across beauty, fashion, electronics, CPG, and home goods. As AI shopping becomes a new path to purchase, ReFiBuy is building the operating system brands and retailers need to compete in the agentic era. About ReFiBuy ReFiBuy is the company behind Agentic Commerce Optimization (ACO), the operating discipline for preparing product catalogs for AI-powered shopping. ACO is how brands and retailers compete as AI shopping agents reshape how consumers research, find, and buy products. Founded by e-commerce veterans from ChannelAdvisor, now Rithum, and Walmart, ReFiBuy is building the commerce intelligence layer for the agentic era. Its Commerce Intelligence Engine gives brands and retailers a closed-loop system for ACO: evaluating, enriching, distributing, monitoring, and continuously optimizing product data. Trusted by leading brands and retailers across beauty, fashion, electronics, CPG, and home goods, ReFiBuy helps products become eligible for agent-driven discovery, comparison, and recommendation wherever AI shopping happens. Learn more at refibuy.ai.