San Francisco AI Startup Onton Raises $7.5M Seed to Expand AI-Powered Product Discovery
Onton, an artificial intelligence-powered shopping and product discovery platform formerly known as Deft, has secured $7.5 million in seed funding as it expands its technology beyond furniture into new categories such as apparel and consumer electronics. The funding brings the company’s total capital raised to approximately $10 million, underlining strong investor confidence in Onton’s neurosymbolic AI approach to online shopping.
Founded by CEO and co-founder Zach Hudson and co-founder Alex Gunnarson, Onton has rapidly grown from a niche furniture search tool into a broader product discovery engine that combines natural language, image inputs, and advanced AI to help consumers find products quickly and confidently. The company reports that its user base has surged from around 50,000 monthly active users to more than 2 million, a milestone that demonstrates early traction in the competitive e-commerce landscape.
The seed round was led by Footwork, a venture capital firm focused on early-stage consumer and commerce startups, with additional participation from Liquid 2, Parable Ventures, and 43. These investors join Onton at a pivotal moment as the startup seeks to redefine online shopping by collapsing traditional multi-week purchase journeys into instant, AI-assisted decision experiences.
Onton’s neurosymbolic AI engine integrates the strengths of neural networks with symbolic reasoning, allowing the system to interpret and structure complex product attributes across the web. This hybrid approach aims to eliminate the “hallucination” problems often associated with standard large language models — where AI generates plausible but incorrect information — and instead deliver logically consistent and trustworthy recommendations. By aggregating and reasoning over data from disparate retailers, Onton helps users make sense of fragmented listings, conflicting reviews, and overloaded search results, reducing the friction that has historically made e-commerce decisions cumbersome.
One of Onton’s differentiators is its support for multimodal search inputs. Users can type natural language queries, upload images, or combine both to express what they’re looking for — whether furnishing a living room or identifying a specific style. The platform also offers an “infinite canvas” ideation feature that allows customers to visualize and iterate on design ideas, bridging the gap between inspiration and purchase. Onton says that its conversion rates are 3–5 times higher than traditional e-commerce sites, and more than 20 percent of users engage with the platform on a weekly basis.
Onton’s technology has been designed to tackle the long, often fragmented shopping journeys that many consumers face online. According to company data, the average shopping decision can take up to 79 days, a timeline the startup aims to collapse to under a single day through intuitively guided search and personalized recommendations. The company’s growth from a small team to approximately 10 full-time employees reflects both the scalability of its platform and the expanding demand for AI-first commerce tools.
The seed funding will be used to support Onton’s product development, expand its engineering and research teams, and accelerate the company’s global footprint as it ventures into new product categories. By broadening beyond furniture into apparel and consumer electronics, Onton is positioning itself against larger e-commerce players and niche AI shopping competitors alike, all while maintaining a focus on intelligent and transparent decision-making.
Investors backing Onton see the opportunity to reshape how consumers interact with online retail. As AI becomes a core component of digital shopping interfaces, platforms that can provide accurate, context-rich, and user-friendly discovery mechanisms are increasingly valuable. The participation of Footwork, Liquid 2, Parable Ventures, and 43 signals confidence in Onton’s ability to address these needs, scale its technology, and capture market share in a space that spans multiple consumer categories.
Looking ahead, Onton’s roadmap includes refining its AI models, enhancing personalization features, and preparing a customizable search engine that adapts to individual preferences. The startup’s ambition is to become a global decision-making tool that supports any product category in any region, helping consumers confidently navigate the complexities of online marketplaces with speed and intelligence.
With its recent funding and surging user base, Onton is poised to challenge conventional e-commerce search paradigms and demonstrate the value of adaptive, AI-driven discovery experiences. As consumer expectations continue to evolve, Onton’s blend of multimodal input, logical reasoning, and personalized recommendations could redefine how people find and choose products online.
