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

ReFiBuy Secures Oversubscribed Seed Round Led by NewRoad Capital Partners

ReFiBuy, a Raleigh e-commerce startup founded by serial entrepreneur Scot Wingo, has raised a $13.6M seed round in an oversubscribed funding led by NewRoad Capital Partners2

2

. The round includes participation from Ridge Ventures, Silicon Road Ventures, Incubate Fund, and VELA Partners, along with continued support from G20 Ventures, Commerce Ventures, and Knoll Ventures2

2

. Wingo, whose previous ventures include ChannelAdvisor, Spiffy, and the Triangle Tweener Fund, told Axios the capital will expand the company's sales, marketing, and engineering teams1

1

. The downtown Raleigh-based company currently employs around 20 people and plans to hire another 10 in the coming months1

1

.

Agentic Commerce Reshapes How E-Commerce Companies Compete

The funding arrives as Agentic Commerce transforms how consumers discover and purchase products online. Between 30% to 45% of U.S. consumers now use generative AI to research items to purchase, whether through ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, or Google search1

1

. Bain & Company projects agentic commerce could reach $300 billion to $500 billion in online retail sales by 2030, representing 15% to 25% of total online retail2

2

. This shift means humans are no longer the only ones searching for products online. AI buying agents now autonomously research, compare, and buy products, creating a new discovery surface while traditional search traffic declines1

1

. Retailers and brands face a critical challenge: most product catalogs were built for human browsing and keyword-driven discovery, not for how AI-driven shopping agents make decisions2

2

.

Commerce Intelligence Engine Powers Agentic Commerce Optimization

ReFiBuy addresses this mismatch through its Commerce Intelligence Engine, which implements Agentic Commerce Optimization (ACO) to optimize product catalogs for AI-based technologies2

2

. The platform evaluates how AI-driven shopping agent systems interpret each SKU, generates expanded product context needed for conversational product discovery, enriches catalogs with optimized data, syncs updates across commerce endpoints, and monitors performance over time2

2

. "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 Axios1

1

. The closed-loop system keeps product data ready as autonomous purchasing technology evolves, helping brands ensure their products surface in results from agentic shopping engines.

Investors Back ReFiBuy's Market Position and Operator Experience

The seed round reflects strong investor confidence in both the agentic commerce market and ReFiBuy's execution. "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 Wingo2

2

. Stefan Sterns, Partner at NewRoad Capital Partners, noted that "product data is becoming the most important infrastructure layer in commerce, and ReFiBuy is building it"2

2

. Matt Nichols from Commerce Ventures emphasized that "retailers and brands are struggling to make sure every one of their SKUs is relevant for the millions of unique LLM-based queries," adding that Wingo has been building solutions for this customer set for decades2

2

. ReFiBuy is already in production with leading brands and retailers across beauty, fashion, electronics, CPG, and home goods2

2

. The company plans to leverage the funding to accelerate its platform development and go-to-market motion to match the urgency customers feel from this shift in commerce2

2

.