Autonomous checkout continues to gain momentum with merchants looking to streamline consumers’ in-store shopping experience. Grabango just announced an additional outside investment in their technology that is already installed at a Giant Eagle C-store in the Pittsburgh area. The regional grocery chain plans on additional deployments during 2021.
Grabango’s system uses ceiling-mounted racks above the aisles, which typically means less store retro-fitting and related installation costs. Merchants are also interested in the future scalability of autonomous checkout so that the technology can be implemented in larger-sized grocery store settings.
The following excerpt from a Grocery Dive article reports more on the topic:
- Checkout-free technology developer Grabango has raised $39 million in Series B funding, the company announced in a press release on Monday.
- The investment round was led by existing investor Commerce Ventures and also included Founders Fund, another earlier Grabango backer, as well as Unilever Ventures, Honeywell Ventures and Wind Ventures.
- Grabango is ramping up its finances as it looks to expand in the fledgling market for technology that automatically charges shoppers for purchases in retail stores.
- Grabango said in the press release that it has so far signed deals to install its technology, which uses racks of ceiling-mounted computer vision cameras to track items as customers make selections, with five retailers that each bring in $1 billion in revenue.
- The company said it plans to use the new funds in part to enhance its engineering team. The investment round follows a $12 million Series A funding round Grabango announced in January 2019.
Overview by Raymond Pucci, Director, Merchant Services at Mercator Advisory Group